


Slider - genesis

by Damceon



Series: Character Backstories [9]
Category: Gamer Fiction
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23256193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damceon/pseuds/Damceon
Series: Character Backstories [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672036





	1. The Good Son

The Good Son

Raes knew he was different. From an early age, he’d shown acute awareness of himself and his environment; an intuitive edge that he never questioned and scarcely understood. His parents, like many humans in the sprawling metroplex, were wage slaves. Some might think him poor, though he rarely wanted for anything. The reality that he knew, however, was that his wealth was beyond measure. He had a home, a family, and hope for better and brighter days.

Raes played with other children in the neighborhood. He was like them in many ways, except for the early budding awareness that seemed to isolate him within himself as he observed the world. Inside the cloister of his body, he witnessed the reality of the world. Children played games that prepared them for the hardships of adulthood… or to escape the more grim facets of the real lives they faced.

Gifted… Talented… Bright…

The words he understood, and even the context in which they were spoken, but they held very little meaning to him. It was like receiving praise for existing, and Raes chafed at the idea of being weighed and measured like an object.

Perhaps it was the infant death of his twin brother that had awakened his mind to the world’s darkness. Maybe that single, monumental loss had planted a seed within him that would grow into a strangling vine that might someday choke the life from him in his grief.

He had known. Even before his parents had seen fit to tell him, he knew his brother was dead. He _remembered_ it. That alone, he could not explain. But the memory was there, always at the edge of his thoughts.

“There are those who give their lives, so that others may live.”

Raes always had trouble reconciling the memory to that apocryphal statement. His twin had been human, so pale and small next to him in the crib where they would sleep. Raes woke one night because his brother had stopped breathing. The other perhaps more pure half of his own fleshly existence. He touched his face with a chubby hand, the stark contrast of brownish skin against the still-warm pink. Fear. Raes _knew_ his brother was already gone. The body that lay next to him had become a shell, vacant and chill. That was when Raes began screaming.

…

Growing up, as an ork in an ork neighborhood wasn’t terrible, though Raes could sense the disparity between the social elite and the poverty line that his family seemed to skirt. Schooling was informal at best, but the caretakers and priests of The Auburn Catholic Church of Saint Michael did what they could to instruct the less-fortunate children in many areas of academia, as well as catholic philosophy.

The imagery of the church was both profound and detached. Raes stared for hours at the stained glass depictions and murals, trying to understand the primal significance of the millennia-old story that was being related to him by people who barely understood it themselves.

Haunted by the vision of his brother’s body growing cold next to him, Raes fought the growing self-recrimination that he had done nothing to save his twin.

_What could I have done?_ He reminded himself. _We were just babies._

…

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, they’d called it. His parents had tried to stay calm and reassuring, but his mother broke down crying when they told him about that night. A night he wasn’t supposed to remember.

Ten weeks old, baby Ignas had just stopped breathing. Never having fully tasted life and all its changes, never getting the chance to be a part of Raes’ life for more than those few precious weeks that even Raes could not remember. All Raes knew was that part of him had died on that night.

But on this night… Raes was ten years old. He didn’t cry.

…

In the shadows of the city, the lights of the church flickered anemically, wane light cast against the darkness in the vain hope that the tiny, dilapidated building would not be crushed by the oily corruption of the concrete jungle. Gangs had moved in, making the subdivision a veritable war-zone.

Raes was bigger and tougher than many of the human gangers, though most were older than him… and despite the fact that his own childhood friends had started a gang, Raes tried to stay out of the rivalries and turf wars. Only on a few, very rare occasions the fighting spilled into the building where Raes still lived with his mom and dad. During those battles, Raes joined his father in cracking a few heads; from either end of the conflict.

His human father would unleash a torrent of punishment on the human gangers, using the stereotypical racism of the gangers to get behind them before he struck, while Raes often just dragged his ork chummers out of harm’s way.

The Dutiful Father

Marcus J. Ferrigan was an average wage-slave in the suburban sprawl. Human by birth, he’d had more than his share of hardship and adversity. But he had a degree, a decent-salary job, and a wife that loved him. He had a son, too. Sacha, his wife, was so nervous when she told him of the pregnancy. Marcus had been terrified, but elated.

The day the doctors told him it was twin boys; Marcus couldn’t believe it. Sacha had given him that sheepish smile and he’d been so happy with everything in his life.

“Complications…”

“Unexpected…”

“Sudden expression is so rare…”

Sacha was seven months along when they had to deliver both children by cesarean. When Marcus received news that he was the father of two very healthy boys and that his wife was stable and recovering, he was so relieved he nearly fainted. The shock of having a human son and ork son was nothing compared to the fear of losing even one of the three of those lives he’d come to cherish.

The day Ignas died had crushed the family. Marcus swore to himself that he would do everything in his power to give Raes a proper future, both for Raes, and Ignas who would never be able to make such a journey.

Marcus had seen the cruel reality… he’d seen the savagery of metahumanity on the Night of Rage. He’d lost friends and loved-ones. He knew what could happen, and took steps to prepare himself and his family.

Education, tutoring, social events to engender acceptance and diversity… even martial combat study. Marcus spent whatever he could to strengthen and enrich his family’s life.

All the preparation paid off when the gangs moved in. Raes was strong… disciplined… but compassionate. Marcus was not so gentle with the invaders. To him, they threatened everything he’d struggled so hard to build. Every broken arm, every crushed knee, every cracked rib was another blow against the marauders in Marcus’ home… each strike was something that pulled them further away from his wife and son.

But even the most rigorous training won’t stop a bullet.

Raes was thirteen when his mother died.

Tides of Change

Marcus never forgave himself, after Sacha’s death. He began working longer hours so he didn’t have to see the pain in his son’s eyes. So he’d forget the failure that ate his insides. He wanted desperately to forget.

Raes, however, was more determined than ever to keep the family he had left. He started working odd jobs to make a few nuyen and would often take meals to his father at the office. Being an ork had its advantages and disadvantages, but Marcus’ determination had groomed Raes into a very personable being with poise and an almost innate sense of charm.

Even the plague of his mother’s death did not seem to drag Raes beneath an optimistic outlook.

Slowly, Marcus seemed to recover. His depression pulled back as he came to realize the sacrifices his son was making for him. They didn’t leave the house where Sacha had died. Raes had demanded they stay. The small life-insurance policy she’d had paid for her cremation and memorial, but Raes had picked up the slack of the lost income.

They needed each other.

So, they held each other up. Leaning on one another for support.

Until the great dragon Dunkelzahn, President of the UCAS, was assassinated.

In a whirlwind, Raes was pulled into a web of secrets and deception. A world of intrigue and death, a life his father had kept hidden until a catastrophic event brought the veil of secrets crashing down around him. Weeks passed in a blur as Marcus took his son into hiding. Fleeing from safe-house to safe-house before…

Wonderland Breaks Free

She called herself Alice. Marcus had refused to trust her, but there was something wrong with the event. Raes _felt_ something alien about this woman.

It had been just another move from one place to the next, but a woman was waiting when they got there. The decrepit hovel reeked of mold and stale food, the threadbare mattresses on the floor slashed and gouged in places. She was standing by the window when they entered, taking a long, slow pull on a cigarette. Raes’ nose wrinkled at the acrid smell, reminded of gunfire in the suburbs.

“Who the frag are you?” Marcus demanded, his voice a dangerous hiss. But Alice ignored him, instead turning her attention to Raes.

“You must be Raes.” She said, smiling warmly. “It’s truly a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“What do you want with us?” but Marcus’ words fell on deaf ears as she began to approach.

She was attractive, Raes thought. Then again, he was a sixteen-year-old ork male… lots of females were attractive. The difference was her alien-ness. Her existence seemed to contradict everything he’d seen. But, so much had happened in such a short time, he wasn’t sure.

Before Marcus could draw his pistol, Raes stayed his hand, the ork’s eyes never leaving Alice’s face.

“I’m Alice, Ferrigan.” She finally looked at Marcus, the briefest of frowns flitting across her face before the warm smile returned. “I’m here for the boy.”

“What do you want?” Raes asked, his tenor voice seemed to shake the air around him. Something was definitely not right.

“I’m almost out of time, Raes. Suffice to say, I need you to run.” Alice looked at her watch, an archaic pocket watch with a silver casing. “As soon as you wake up, run as hard and fast as you can.”

What happened next was nothing short of insane.

The world fell apart. Raes had no other explanation. The room fairly ripped in half, split like a cracking shell, and pain wracked his entire body. The sound of mechanical screams filled his ears for an eternity, and Raes felt he’d lose his mind… but the pain…

He snapped into consciousness in a vat. Nothing made sense, except the pain. The pain was real. He focused on it. Every fiber of his being seemed swollen, bleeding… raw.

_UV dump-shock._ He realized, but he didn’t know why he knew.

He could hear machines, faintly, and could almost see through the viscous fluid that entombed him. Involuntarily, his body began to spasm as a current jolted through him. It didn’t hurt as much as the dump-shock but it was real, too. He was in a lab, tangled in a web of cables and electrodes, wearing a cap of neural interface relays.

Another spasm as a second shock passed through him, this one more intense than the first. Without hesitating, he began tearing at the wires that stuck to his skin, thrashing free of the nest of snakes that sparked and wriggled. The pain faded, somewhat, though he wasn’t sure why.

He pulled free of the clear air tube that he’d held tight in his mouth, unaware of it until he found himself without breath and struggling in a soup of clear syrup. A hand plunged down from above, grabbing his left arm and pulling upward sharply. He felt the wet pop of his shoulder leaving the socket, but it was minor compared to the pain he still felt. Bunching his muscles reflexively, he tightened his left shoulder and grabbed his left arm with his right hand as he hurtled upward and out of the vat.

Blinking the pseudo-vitreous liquid from his eyes, Raes could see what held him. A mountain of flesh and steel that was a troll, with an obviously cybernetic arm, stared at him appraisingly… a prize fish fresh from the lake.

“Got ‘im.” The troll gruffed, slinging Raes up and over the railing of a catwalk that spanned the tank the ork had been suspended in.

Raes landed heavily on the catwalk, the metal cold and sterile, biting into the skin of his legs and side as he lay gasping for air.

“Tink I hurt ‘im a bit.” The troll knelt down and nudged Raes’ dislocated shoulder. “Left shoulder’s outta socket.”

As if in answer to some unspoken command, the troll planted one hand firmly on Raes’ shoulder and the other on his elbow. With a sharp pull and slight twist, the joint popped painfully back into place. Raes yelped like a kicked dog. He was only vaguely aware of his nakedness. All that mattered right now was the pain.

“Null sheen, chummer.” The troll smiled, hefting Raes to his feet. “Good as new once we get you outta here.”

Raes’ mind began to clear as he looked around. Two men in white lab coats lay sprawled beside a row of computers and monitoring devices. The tank was situated on one side of the room, sharing a wall and closing in a hemisphere of plexi-glass. The tangled mass of cables that erupted from the tank coiled into a thick braid that turned along the ceiling and dropped down the far wall into the backs of the computers. A door on either end of the room had a red bulb glowing sinisterly above the open portals.

The lab was cold… sterile… Raes’ knees buckled but the troll held him up and turned him as the ork vomited. Thick clear liquid, streaked with the acidic taste of bile, expelled from Raes’ stomach and down into the tank. The eerie sight did nothing for Raes’ confusion as his stomach clenched for another attempt.

“Pretty sick, too.” The troll spoke to no one. “Should I carry ‘im?”

“Copy dat.” The troll answered the silent reply and turned his attention to Raes. “Yo, kid… time to move.”

Something clicked on in Raes’ brain.

_As soon as you wake up, run as hard and fast as you can._

Raes stiffened, trying to put his feet on the catwalk. The grating was slimy from the viscous jelly that dripped from his skin, the cold of the metal sending a shiver up his spine. He followed the troll.

Raes didn’t know enough about magic to understand what had happened, but the more he thought about it, the more he believed he’d been captured by a powerful mage and given over to this lab as a test subject. It was all he could focus on as the troll led him through a maze of blank white hallways that glowed red from the emergency lights over each doorway.

_UV dump-shock._ The thought prickled at the back of his mind. It _felt_ like the right answer, but it didn’t make any sense. He didn’t understand it. He understood that magic could do many things. Perhaps magic had landed him in this place, and now someone was getting him out.

The Harsh Reality

“You scan me, kid?” the decker was practically screaming at Raes. “You ain’t got a family. You ain’t got a dad. They _put_ that drek in your head so they could program you. We just beat ‘em to the deadline, is all.”

“He does, actually.” The shaman said thoughtfully, then scratched at his narrow chin. “Well, _probably_ , anyway. The fraggers can’t _breed_ magic into somebody. They snatched him when he was little. Probably when he was still an infant.”

Raes could only shake his head and squeeze his eyes shut. His whole life had fallen to pieces in a matter of days… hours. It had been only six hours since he was extracted from the vat, and already his life had been destroyed. Everything he had ever done… everyone he’d ever known… a lie.

“Hey guys!” the young girl named Kalinda waved a datapad triumphantly. “I got his dossier.”

“Pay-data!” the decker’s sour expression melted into a jovial, slightly sadistic smile. “Can’t deny the truth, kid. Come check it out.”

Raes stared blankly through the side of the helo, wishing the world made more sense.

“It’s chill, kid.” The troll’s rumbling voice sounded distant, if sincere. “You ain’t da only one. I heard dere’s more-a dem like you what’s been sprung from da vats. You got family in misfortune, ya know?”

“Some family.” Raes’ voice was soft, split between sadness and bitter irony. “We’ve never even met.”

…

_Sleeper agent._ The thought chilled Raes to the bone. He’d looked at the dossier that Kalinda had found, and none of it made Raes feel better.

Weapons training, close combat training, a slew of academic information, organized crime fronts, syndicate bosses and under-bosses, corporate names and faces, well-known shadow runners and high profile public officials. It read like a recipe for a premier assassin. But none of it came to mind when Raes looked at it. It was foreign to him. Either the programming was too deeply embedded in his subconscious, or hadn’t yet taken place. The idea that he might still be a puppet to an organization he didn’t know or understand frightened him. What if a trigger caused him to suddenly murder someone important to him?

The thought struck him as grimly amusing. There was no one left that mattered to him. His family had been a lie. The file didn’t even have information on his true origins, just his programming regimen.

In all of it, though, no clues could be found as to who or what organization had initiated the program. Every lead was a dead end, every clue merely a riddle that could lead to any of a dozen groups or corporations. While the runners were puzzling out “who” was behind it, Raes was busy trying to understand “why” he’d been taken.

The young ork tried to sleep, hoping that, maybe when he woke up, the horrible ordeal would just be a nightmare and he’d be in his room. Violent visions flashed in his mind. He was dancing…

Blood sprayed from the bodies that surrounded him as his blades sliced through flesh. He was bathed in it… saturated by it. The coppery smell thrilled his senses as he moved, bringing death with swift precision. It was almost real, almost a memory.

Raes woke with a start, gasping for air as he had when he was first pulled from the vat where he’d been “raised”. He felt like hours had passed, but the cramped quarters of the helicopter reminded him of where he was. The team that had extracted him looked on with expressions of suspicion and concern. Maybe they were thinking about geeking him. Maybe they thought he was a liability.

A plan started to form in Raes’ mind as he assessed the situation. The troll would be the biggest hurdle, both metaphorically and physically. If he could incapacitate the troll, Raes might be able to use the body as a shield while he dispatched the others. That left the pilot or remote rig. He didn’t think it would be wise to upset the balance of the helo just yet, since he was sure he couldn’t fly it.

_Spirits, what the frag am I thinking?_ Raes’ mind lost focus as he warred with the conditioning that had made itself known.

Images of combat, partial strands of memory that could only have come from the UV system’s hypno-programming, flooded his mind. He felt sick. The dizzying rush of a life he’d never lived was bombarding him while he was awake. Sensory input was overloaded as he began to experience a sort of dual reality. The dissonance sent him into convulsions.

“Told ya he was gonna spaz.” The decker sneered, holding his hand up toward Kalinda.

The girl placed a credstick in his hand and sighed.

“We should tranq him before he hurts himself.”

“Ya,” the troll’s voice was solid, “or us.”

Something sticky and cool was slapped on his skin, but Raes never noticed. His flailing stopped, but his mind started running on over-drive.

…

Unburdened by the need to send messages to the meat, Raes’ brain continued to sort through the embedded programming and store the information into his long-term memory. He dreamed, after a fashion, but he was not pleased with the images that cascaded through his mind. It was a tidal wave of stop-action images. All of them screaming at the same time: flickering, dancing, and writhing while his mind sorted them, image by image.

Raes wanted desperately for the images to stop, for the cyclone to end. But it kept swirling through him. Patterns began to emerge. He lost awareness of the outside world and all that remained were the dreams.

He was a bodyguard for a mid-level exec, wading through the crush of bodies to resume his position by his charge’s side. The movements where choppy, scattered images taken from different angles without consideration to continuity. He stood by his ward, alert and aware for signs of danger. His senses honed in on every sound, every movement. Until he realized that the attack wasn’t going to come from someone in the crowd. _He_ was the assassin. The plan was already in place. All he needed to do was draw his weapon and put a bullet into the mark’s head.

He was fishing at a reserve, all his camping gear stowed next to his tackle box. A small boat sat idly near the middle of the lake, two older men casting lines. The earpiece in his right ear buzzed to life with information. He didn’t respond. Laying the fishing pole on the ground, he left the lakeshore and circled counter clockwise. A pistol was in his hand. Someone was looking to geek his employer. The would-be assassin was prepared in his blind, lining up a shot when Raes blew off the gunman’s trigger hand from his only blind spot.

Raes was rappelling down the side of a building, his night-suit tight on his skin. He was calm and focused. The heavy windows were solid beneath his feet as he bounded down floor after floor. At one point, he used a small acidic line to burn a hole in a window, just large enough for him to squeeze through. Once inside, he was scouring the office complex, looking for a specific desk. Words and images tangled themselves together as he cued the decker to infiltrate the terminal he’d activated. He just needed a few more minutes and he’d have all the data he needed.

The scope of the rifle was warm from staring through it for so long. He was patient. The mark always came. It was part of the routine. That’s why it took planning and observation. The mark stepped out of his car. The rifle tugged in his hands, the bullet sailing out and hitting his target. The man’s head snapped backward from the shock as a second bullet blew through his chest. Raes was already moving before his target hit the ground.

It went on for hours, but the party was part of the distraction. The team was in place and the charges were set. His dance partner seemed nervous, perhaps because he was an ork. Maybe she was an operative. He couldn’t be sure, the images flashed by too quickly. The explosions happened right on cue, and Raes broke her beautiful neck right when the screaming started. His gun flashed out and bullets erupted from the barrel, bodies dropping in spats of blood. It was easy, when you planned it right.

His disguise was perfect… that’s what he was told. An illusion. He had to trust it. He _did_ trust it. The team was everything. He smiled pleasantly, his body relaxed and calm. All he needed to do was deliver the food and a quick message. He reached the table, doling out the steaming entrees to each guest. Then, just before he left, he leaned in close to whisper into the man’s ear. He didn’t know what he’d said. The images were already gone.

…

“Hey, scan this…” the decker’s voice was low, conspiratorial. “They finished the programming six _months_ ago. This kid’s already a weapon.”

“So why da play?” The troll mused, scratching his chin with his meat hand.

“So his brain could sort it out.” Kalinda frowned. “It’s too much to sort at once. They had to put it in context.”

“Context?” The troll’s face was a knot of confusion.

“Sure.” The decker added. “That scans. If the kid doesn’t know ‘why’ he can do what he can do, he won’t trust it. And, if you want to control somebody, you have to _know_ them… understand them. They were building the kid to be a pet runner.”

“’Ow many like ‘im?” the troll’s face was filled with concern.

“Don’t know. Don’t care.” The decker smiled. “One less, by our count.”

“The nuyen’s what matters, huh?” Kalinda snarled. “What if there _are_ more? Whoever’s doing this is gonna launch something huge. Spirits know what’ll happen then!”

“Look, Kali,” the decker’s face was stone, “we’re not being paid to sort it the frag out, so be chill. If the buyer wants more, we’ll get more. But I’m not being paid to save everyone’s hoop.”

Raes hated being awake. He hated being asleep even more.


	2. Waking to Nightmare

((Continuation.))

Raes hated being awake. He hated being asleep even more.

For nearly two days, the group moved from vehicle to vehicle and hovel to hovel before stopping to rest at a presumed safe house. Raes still didn’t know what city they were in. They’d quit talking to him directly after some event Raes had missed.

He was hungry and exhausted. What little sleep he’d managed to catch while being dragged from place to place had been riddled with chaotic images and dizzying “lessons”. Everything he knew…

But he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it all, anymore. The fatigue and sleep deprivation were combining to make Raes feel a little delirious. On more than one occasion during the exodus, some of the programming had leaked into his waking hours. Like some simsense hallucination, he watched his own shadow skitter along the sidewalk next to the step-van as they drove: a deranged puppet dancing without its strings.

Kali offered him the first food he’d eaten in days. Realizing the total absurdity of that observation, Raes ate the soy-protein bar and tried his best to savor his first meal in a lifetime he’d never lived.

“What was it like?” Kali was fourteen or fifteen, Raes thought.

He didn’t quite understand the question, and she could see his confusion plainly on his face, so Kali rephrased.

“In the UV system… is it different than this?” She gestured around the cluttered room where the group had come to rest. Veritable mountains of equipment were nearly crushed into the corners while the runners tried to take a break and get some sleep.

“I guess not.” Raes shrugged, wishing he couldn’t think about the comparison. “My dad… No… I suppose it wasn’t too different.”

Raes choked back the urge to follow through with a biting remark about having a false life ripped away, deciding instead to roll his food around in his mouth and swallow the gummy ball.

“I’m sorry… I’ve never jacked-in.” Kali’s eyes were apologetic. Raes hated her pity. He wanted to tear this reality to tattered ribbons in the vain hope that _his_ reality… the life he’d had in the UV system… would be somewhere beneath the bloody remains.

“Why not?” He didn’t care, but the question came easily. Practiced. He was amazed at the even tone of his voice, the façade that he instinctively presented. It had to be the programming.

“Oh, I can’t take the implants.” Kali smiled softly, her face turning red as she looked down. “I get dizzy when I try to ‘trode in, too.”

“Leave it, Kali.” The decker snarled; looking over his shoulder as he lay sprawled on the far side of the room. “Once we hand the kid over to Mr. Johnson, he’s history. Not our biz.”

“Stuff it, Tweak.” The girl was suddenly indignant, her eyes flashing angrily.

“Silence, all of you.” The shaman growled, his face grave. Exhaustion showed plainly on his leathery features. He was, by far, the oldest member of the group.

“Sorry, Gray.” Kali whispered. Tweak, the human decker, said nothing as he rolled over to try and sleep once more.

The troll, at one time called “Crunchy” by another member of the group, was already breathing heavily in his sleep.

…

The drop didn’t happen as planned. Mr. Johnson never showed. Slate, a human street samurai, had called their fixer for more information.

Slate wasn’t very tall. A little over 150cm, but he was broad and heavily muscled. From what Raes could see, any cyber-ware Slate had was sub-dermal. The man’s slicked charcoal black hair and cold blue eyes regarded the world with disdain and suspicion. His movements were calculated and purposeful, with very little wasted energy.

The fixer, someone that Slate called “Eddie,” seemed to have all the wrong answers for Slate. The street samurai ended the call with a snarl.

“Mr. Johnson sends her regards and fifty percent but regrettably cannot complete the transaction due to unforeseen circumstances.” Slate’s voice was thick with venom. “Damn corp slitch.”

“What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?” Tweak stood from where he’d been sitting.

“She won’t take ‘im.” Crunchy shrugged. “Least it wasn’t a total wash.”

“Crunchy’s right.” Slate rubbed his face tiredly. “Some is better than none, but that leaves the kid on our hands and he’s too hot to keep here.”

“We could always give him to the Star.” Tweak smiled cruelly, staring right at Raes.

“Yeah, right. And spend time in the slam for our trouble. Next!” Slate let his mouth twitch at the corners in a stifled smile. It seemed like an inside joke.

“What about the shadow?” Gray’s question was directed at Tweak.

“Null chance.” Tweak shook his head. “She’s still mad at me for the batch mix-up with Ares lest year.”

“Still? I thought you two were close?” It was Kali’s turn to be sarcastic.

Tweak only shrugged.

“Fox know anybody?” Kali turned to Slate.

“Maybe.” Slate was non-committal. “If not… then what?”

All eyes turned to Raes for a brief moment. He felt like a piece of meat, again. They were sizing him, weighing his worth. They never said, but he knew they were thinking about the files on his dossier. There weren’t any specifics, which made what Raes _might_ know a variable they might try to gamble with.

“You could always take me back.” Raes said flatly, the jest landing in the room like a live grenade.

Silence swallowed time. Raes could hear the others breathing. For a time, he wondered if they thought he might be serious. Then, he considered the consequences of the idea. He was near the brink of panic when the door to the room opened and guns appeared in every hand to point at the new arrival.

“Hoi.” A slim elven woman with chrome eyes and a tight smile stepped halfway through the entrance and raised both hands. Her battered, real leather jacket looked freshly oiled; dots of water from the heavy fog outside had gathered on the hide and were just beginning to roll off. “Good to see everyone awake.”

“Spirits, Fox-Face.” Gray breathed in exasperation. “You could call ahead, at least.”

“And spoil the surprise?” Fox smiled. Raes could see elongated canines… fangs… in her mouth. He wondered if they were real. Fox’s smiled died on her lips when she saw Raes. She whirled on Slate, her hands clenched in tight fists.

“Dammit, Slate!” Fox-Face jabbed a finger in Raes’ direction. “What the frag is _that_ still doing here?!”

“Whoa, easy… easy…” Slate held his hands up, placating. “Two-Shoes said there was a tangle for the Johnson. We’re getting fifty percent and the kid.”

“No!” Fox frowned and shook her head deliberately, her arms crossing defiantly over her chest. “I _told_ you this run was fragging insane. I _told_ you that you’d be in over your head.”

“Look, Foxy…” Slate reached out to put a hand on Fox’s shoulder. The elf woman’s stance relaxed for only on instant before her guard went back up.

“I don’t want to hear it!” Fox shrugged off the momentary indecision. “We get rid of it, and we get rid of it _now_.”

“I have a name.” Raes was surprised at the venom in his words. He was standing. When had he stood? Everyone seemed to see him for the first time.

“Oh, no, kid.” Crunchy said softly, shaking his head and covering his eyes with one hand.

“ _Excuse_ me?” Fox spun around to face Raes and took a dangerous step forward.

“I said, ‘I have a name.’” But his conviction was gone, replaced by the twisting knots in his empty stomach.

“’I have a name.’” Fox mocked him, her voice high-pitched like glass scratching glass. “I don’t give a frag! You’re not supposed to be here. Slate shoulda geeked you as soon as the Johnson fell through.”

“Fox…” Kali tried to interject.

“Shut up!” Fox diverted her verbal assault only just enough to silence Kali before returning her attention to Raes. “You’re too hot to sell. You’ve got nothing but trouble written all over you.”

Fox-Face thrust her hand at Raes’ chest, pushing him to the ground.

Only, Raes didn’t fall. In fact, Fox-Face’s hand never made contact. Slipping by her arm, Raes grabbed her wrist and pulled her past him, wrenching hard against her elbow to break the joint.

Nearly falling forward, Fox-Face struggled to regain her balance as Raes twisted her arm sharply. Raes could feel the limb straining, but it didn’t break.

Pandemonium. Everything seemed to slow down. The target wasn’t down. Raes had to take down the target. Guns were drawn, voices raised in alarm. Fox-Face began to react. Then, the room tilted to the right and slammed hard against Raes’ side. Before his brain registered that he’d been tripped, Fox-Face was pummeling him from above.

Raes tried to cover his head. He tried to defend himself… but she was too fast… too strong.

This time, waking up didn’t hurt as bad. Raes hadn’t dreamt. His body was uninjured. He almost felt relieved. Apprehension filled him as he realized where he was.

Fox-Face was scowling at him from the corner while Slate nursed a split lip right next to her. Kali, Tweak, and Gray had gone. Crunchy was sitting near Raes, but the troll’s eyes were closed and the massive metahuman was smiling to himself about something.

Raes began formulating a plan. The troll was incredibly strong, but so was Fox-Face. He hadn’t tested Slate, so he couldn’t assume anything about the human. He didn’t think he could take any one of them alone, and the idea of trying to take all three was suicide.

_What the frag?_ Raes stopped himself, shaking his head to disrupt the chain of thought.

…

They were shadowrunners, privateers that lived on the fringes of society and the law. Spies, mercenaries, thieves, bodyguards… Their skills were invaluable to those who could not afford to dirty their own hands… or those whose hands were already too dirty.

And they had a choice piece of hardware they couldn’t unload.

Hours of bickering back and forth resulted in a stalemate. Slate convinced Fox-Face that geeking Raes could result in some “hidden-defense” program that might have the potential to kill (or at least seriously injure) Fox. She didn’t entirely buy the line of total drek, but Slate assured her that she had no real way of knowing how skilled the kid was without testing him.

“’E slid by you easy enough.” Crunchy added. “Like he’s always ready. You always ready?”

Fox had only stared daggers at Crunchy for the jibe.

“Alright… _Slider_ …” Fox-Face’s voice seemed unusually calm, to Raes. “Make yourself useful and straighten up this hole.”

…

It hadn’t been easy, living in the ever-changing hideouts of a runner team, but Raes learned a lot. At least, he thought he was learning. He couldn’t ever be sure.

The nightmarish hypno-programming pervaded his sleep, casting doubt on every new experience as something that might have already been simulated. A few times, Raes nearly drove himself insane with the idea that he might still be inside the UV system.

Fox-Face took to the habit of blind-siding Raes, though she’d usually receive a few nasty bruises for her trouble. The end result, however, was Raes waking up on the floor with a pounding headache, until Raes got fed-up with her drek.

Raes couldn’t remember, afterward, what had sparked Fox-Face’s ire, though he sometimes wondered if it was him just being alive. He recalled her attack well enough, though. It had seemed slow, clumsy even. Raes had seen Fox’s shadow on the floor as her arm arced toward him to strike the side of his head.

The blow never landed as Raes dipped beneath her outstretched hand and grabbed her elbow hard with his right hand. Jerking her off balance and down, Raes brought his right knee up into Fox’s armpit. As Fox gasped from the strike, Raes grabbed her slender elven neck with his left hand. He was sick of her abuse. Tired of being beaten. Fox’s eyes widened in surprise, but the chrome metal masked any other emotions.

Raes ignored her attempts to break loose, her fists battering his arms, chest, and head with little effect. He kept hold of her neck as he punched her solidly in the ribs, the meat-on-meat smack followed by a satisfying crunch as bones cracked. Then, drawing her up, Raes head-butted her right in the nose. A fine spray of blood splattered on Raes’ face as Fox collapsed to the floor.

That was about when Crunchy knocked Raes senseless.

…

“Fragger hits _hard_.” Fox said again, daubing the blood from her nose.

Raes was tenderly probing the large lump on the back of his head where a troll’s metal hand had sent him tumbling into unconsciousness only hours before.

“Serves you right.” Kali put her hands on her narrow hips. Fox laughed.

“Yeah, it does.” It was the first time Raes had heard Fox laugh. He thought he might die of shock. “You’re one tough fragger, Slider. I wouldn’t want to be on your bad side.”

“Again.” Chuckled Crunchy.

Fox laughed again and nodded. Then, she stood up and walked over to where Raes was sitting and leaned down so they were face-to-face.

“Between you and me, though,” Fox’s voice dropped to a seductive whisper, her cyber-fangs glinting red with her own blood, “I hope you’re always full of wonderful little surprises.”

Raes didn’t quite understand his initial reaction to what she’d said, though he understood her insinuation well enough. Was his response genuine or programmed? He didn’t know.

Fox stood and playfully patted Raes’ cheek, leaving Raes to his indecision.

Raes and Fox never fought each other again.

…

Raes started running with the team after three months. He still wasn’t sleeping well, but many of the patterns were starting to make more sense. Raes began to listen to the semi-intuitive programming to uncover pre-developed skills. At the start, it was like a toddler struggling to walk but, as he used the abilities that made themselves known, Raes found his understanding flowed more easily each time.

Now, however, the concept of context made sense to him. He found the idea of living off the grid equal parts comfort and disquiet. He still mourned his old life, a life built out of lies that only he believed, but he embraced the survivalist mentality that grew in the wake of the hypno-programming.

With each run, he found a sense of peace… self-worth and reassurance. It was probably the effects of positive reinforcement via the hypno-programming to perform each task with professional skill.

Even so, whenever the lessons progressed faster than his grasp on them, he balked at asking for help. Uncertainty was weakness. Doubt became death. He would learn alone. It didn’t help that some of the content of his “lessons” made him worry about what he knew. Such information could prove very dangerous… very useful…

…

When the life of another metahuman was taken by Raes’ hand, he thought he might feel remorse or guilt. To his disgust and horror, he felt the same elation and sense of contentment he had from performing other “lesson”-related tasks. More and more, he grew to detest the organization that had shaped him… whoever they were.

…

It was a simple smash and grab diversion so the group could extract critical information regarding a certain corporate suit. Slider was the diversion, while the rest of the team was supposed to collect the data and cover their own hoops. Slider liked the idea of being alone. He liked the idea of being needed by the team. He’d spent days and nearly every nuyen he had in preparation for the run. Slider was ready.

His part of the plan was simple. Break into the jewelry store, steal some high-dollar replicas and maybe a few of the genuine pieces, and make enough noise to draw the security personnel away from the second-floor offices.

It had been a trap. Slider had been loath to admit it, but it was very cleverly concealed. Fox-Face had called him paranoid when he’d even suggested the possibility. Tweak had been indignant with Slider’s protestations that they hadn’t cased the place beforehand.

That didn’t make it any easier for Slider to accept the loss of Gray and Kali.

The curses over the com-link, the readiness of the guards that answered the alarms that Slider had intentionally triggered… it had almost been too much. Slider adapted the parameters of his mission en-route. Instead of distracting the guards and drawing them away from the offices, Slider killed them and hastened up the stairs. He could just hear the fading thuds of suppressed gunfire and bodies hitting the floor. The air was thick with the smell of blood and burnt plastic. Magic had probably been used.

Above him, the door into the stairwell burst open with a loud bang as Slate and Fox-Face tumbled through and leapt away from the doorway. Bullets skipped off the metal frame and steel door, chipping bits of duracrete from the walls before zinging in dangerous ricochets.

_Where are the others?_ Slider bound up the stairs to cover Slate’s retreat.

Fox’s chrome eyes shone angrily, a growing bloodstain on her stomach prompted Slider to be more cautious. Death came in many ways, he knew. Slate’s face was drawn and pale, every muscle clenched tightly with barely-contained rage.

A small orb drifted through the door in a lazy arc. Slider recognized it at once and snapped into action to intercept it. Catching the flash grenade in his hand, Slider jumped out of the stairwell and pulled the door shut behind him.

When the grenade activated, Slider had only just released his grip on it and shielded his eyes from the brilliant sunburst of light that seared the darkness of the office cluster on this level. A bullet, carefully timed to coincide with the flash, punched through Slider’s back, just below his ribs. But he was already moving to take cover, ignoring the burns on his hand from the proximity to the flare.

He could hear movement… shadowy figures groping blindly in the darkness after the supernova Slider had returned to them.

They were human, Slider observed over their corpses. He wasn’t entirely sure how he’d killed them, but he knew it hadn’t been pleasant for any of them. They’d suffered heavily in the ambush, Slider noticed as if studying a rare specimen of insect, evidenced by bullet wounds and puncture marks from Fox-Face’s cyber-spurs. The most brutal injuries, however, were likely Slider’s doing: two broken arms, a broken leg, and two broken necks. The body can only take so much stress before shutting down.

To be sure, Slider shoved his knife up through their throats and into their brains. It was practiced… mechanical. His stomach churned dangerously in protest to the habitual ease with which he conducted himself. The programming prompted him to secure the bodies before checking the team’s condition.

Once he’d stripped the weapons he could find from the dead, Slider did a quick self-assessment and cued his comm.

“Slider,” He identified himself, falling into a strange pattern he’d never used before, “three hostiles, bodies secured. Sustained injuries, checking for other members of the team.”

The team was everything… but, even if he couldn’t save them, he couldn’t leave the bodies to be found by anyone that would come looking.

…

“Frag, Slider, let it be.” Slate held his face in his hands. The group had just finished moving their base for the third time in four days. “We did everything we could… _you_ did everything you could. We’ll miss them both, but we can’t change what happened.”

Slider made no response. His wounds itched, but he resisted scratching. Magical healing may have mended his body, but his mind was still burdened with the events that had brought them to this place.

Hellion, an ork mage who’d known Crunchy for a few years, was busy using her magic to heal Fox’s injury. Slider could already see the thoughts on everyone’s faces. Slate was going to ask her to run with them.

He’d only been with Slate’s crew for six months, but he could sense their need. He could already hear the question being asked. It wasn’t the programming, this time. With Gray dead, Slate needed new magic. From what Crunchy would tell them, Hellion was a regular magic wiz and all biz… though Slider hadn’t witnessed a keen professional edge in any of the team. They had their skills and had no trouble keeping focused on the mission, but professional?

Slider didn’t smile. The programmed disdain fell before the onslaught of his real-world grief.

He couldn’t help but wonder if the ambush had something to do with him, a minute tendril of the massive beast that had turned him into what he was now. It was almost as if the parent were desperately trying to reach its offspring. Before Slider could feel the embedded compassion, he shivered in disgust. He’d rather kill his father than embrace him.

Maybe it would be safer for Slate’s team if he moved on.

…

Another two months with Slate and company, and Slider had scrounged enough nuyen to get his own place. It was a disgusting place in a horrible neighborhood, but they didn’t ask questions and the locks worked.

Life away from a team was different but Slider adapted quickly, a benefit of his conditioning, perhaps. He rolled local punks for nuyen and meager equipment when things got lean. Trying to keep a low profile, Slider made few acquaintances and fewer friends. He knew that the more people that knew of him, the easier he would be to track.

Sure, he didn’t have a SIN, no criminal record on file, and no clue where his family was (if he even had one), but he was torn by the impulse to connect and the need to stay hidden. More than once, the idea that the need for identity was intended to serve as a tracking mechanism by his once-captors kept Slider from using any name that he knew from his time in the UV system. He also shied away from using made-up names, as the possibility that his imagination might somehow be linked to embedded code names that would flag him on some secret watch list was a risk he refused to take.

It wasn’t long before Slider began taking his first steps into the shadowrunner world alone. All the hypno-programming in the world couldn’t have prepared him for that.

…

Her name was Jeanie, and she was an entrepreneur. At least, that’s what she’d called herself. She was a fixer, that’s what Slider called her. He’d met her at one of the noisier clubs in Auburn. A small dive called Heat 7. Mostly a ganger bar, with a few low-ranking syndicate toughs looking for a good time, Heat 7 played loud music that catered to no one in particular. Slider hated the place. There were too many angles to cover.

She was the only person sitting alone at a table… the only person sitting _alone_ in a crowded bar. Slider could see her bodyguards, though; two meaty-looking humans in speed-biker synth leather with conspicuous bulges under their arms. She feigned surprise when Slider walked casually to her table and sat opposite her, his back to her now-alert meat shields.

“Well, well.” She smiled warmly, her voice barely audible above the din. “A little out of place, aren’t we?”

“If so, we’re a perfect match.” Slider shrugged slightly and glanced around the bar before signaling a waitress.

“Daring.” She smiled, her teeth were slightly crooked but dazzlingly white. “What’s your name? Or should I call you Prince Charming?”

“Slider.” The ork’s face was expressionless, letting the woman know he was all biz. “I’m newly arrived and looking for a little work.”

“Jeanie.” Jeanie’s expression flattened to a near-frown. “Never heard of you, rook.”

“Being known isn’t always a good thing,” Slider let a conspiratorial smile flash across his face, “but I completely understand that very little can be taken on faith.”

“What’ll you have, chummer?” the waitress half-shouted over the music. Slider ordered a water, earning an eye-roll from the woman.

“So… Slider.” Jeanie crossed her arms over her chest and sat back to look the ork over. “What kind of work can you do?”

“I’ll tell you what.” Slider pulled out a small wad of nuyen scrip so quick that Jeanie’s bodyguards didn’t have enough time to react. “Get me a clean line, wrist phone or pocket secretary, and you can call me when you’ve got work for one.”

“And I’m supposed to do this why?” Jeanie’s face was flushed, her poise ruffled by the sudden movement. She’d have to look into more competent protection, if some no-name punk off the street could surprise them. “Charity? Or is it because I like you and we’re such good friends?”

Slider ignored the sarcasm, counting out several hundred nuyen on the table in front of Jeanie before pocketing the remaining money and standing.

“Call it faith.” Slider smiled, turning to leave. “I’ll stop by tomorrow for the phone.”

Jeanie couldn’t help but be intrigued. She might even consider getting him a phone.

…

The first few solo jobs were easy; package deliveries between gangs, errands for yakuza toughs looking to score hoop-kissing points with their bosses, and a smattering of low-profile protection work. The pay was slight, if it could even be called pay, but the reward was in earning a reputation with Jeanie as a dependable solitaire and competent muscle man.

After a few months, Jeanie set Slider up with a bit of wet-work. The mark was a no-name exec for a small-nuyen firm based just outside the Redmond Barrens. Despite the curiosity to know _why_ someone wanted the suit geeked, Slider carried out the order flawlessly. The specifics hadn’t indicated a timetable or conditions of termination, so Slider made sure to take his time and make his move in a clean and efficient manner.

In a darkened apartment, Nathan L. Graves met a sudden end. Lone Star had no leads on who had committed the robbery/homicide.

Slider always reminded himself that his skills could lead “Them” back to him. It was a terrifying thought. Maybe they were waiting to trigger him… activate the weapon that had been stolen so that it would come home quietly and of its own accord.

The next mark was someone’s wife. Only after completing the assignment did Slider feel violently ill with his desire to take life. He _enjoyed_ killing. The feeling made him wonder about the origins of the sociopath mind. Whoever had stolen him from his crib at infancy, had shaped a very skilled sociopath, one that would never forgive them.

After a handful of hits, Jeanie scored some bodyguard work for Slider. The long-term, higher-paying assignments were a welcome change of pace, but Slider felt the ever-present tug of his programming guiding every step and assuring him of his ability.

Fear defeated complacency at every turn. He relaxed only enough to rest. He changed residence every few months or as frequently as several times a month. He used names randomly generated from public databases, and took as few jobs as possible that required fake identification. Even though he yearned for some connection to his life, he knew it could get him killed… or worse.

…

“What are you thinking about?” Carla asked, brushing her hair back over a long, pointed ear. Slider’s mind stopped flat, a lie forming before he even realized what was happening. He swallowed, letting the programmed response drift away in a sigh.

“I’m terrified of letting anyone close.” The honest truth of the statement set him free, all the while his conditioned senses were screaming to run.

He wasn’t sure how long it had been. How many times he’d slept with this elf next to him. How many nights of burning passion had turned his fears to ashes only to wake in a cold sweat and wanting to escape. Weeks? Months? He wanted that sense of blurred time to last. Everything else seemed so fleeting. Life was fleeting.

“Am I too close?”

Carla smiled, running her fingers along his stomach, digging into the cotton of his shirt and wriggling between the buttons to find bare flesh.

“Yes.” Slider almost choked. He knew he’d been with her for too long.

It was a terrible feeling, to know love. Terrible in its purity and warmth, knowing he would rather die than cause Carla to suffer… but his existence was dangerous to those around him. If he was found… he shuddered, not daring to think about it.

But he _did_ think about it. It plagued him… even more than the memory of Ignas’ death. He shook, down to his core. Ignas… a memory constructed inside a virtual world so real that, even now, Slider couldn’t honestly say that it hadn’t happened. And the people who hunted him… how far would they go to get him back? Or would they try to geek him? Silence him so their dirty little secret would be safe?

_There are others, like me._ Slider remembered. But he didn’t know who they were… didn’t know where to start looking.

“Slider?” Carla’s voice was full of concern.

How had they met? He couldn’t remember. He tried, but every effort was bogged down in the quicksand of fear that threatened to swallow him whole.

How much longer until they found him? Carla would never be safe, as long as Slider was around.

When Slider finally came to, he was on the floor. He was naked… tangled in the bed sheets in Carla’s room. It was her apartment. She was standing near the foot of the bed, staring at him with obvious worry. The telecom screen was glowing faintly to her left, casting the left side of her face in a ghostly blue-white light that chilled Slider’s soul. She must’ve been about to call someone. A doctor… maybe a mage… unless…

He fought down the urge to accuse her. For a fleeting moment, he’d thought she might have been one of _them_. But she couldn’t be. She wouldn’t have waited so long to bring him in. With an extreme effort, Slider managed to relax his breathing enough to form words.

“I’m sorry, Carla.” He slowly began to pull himself from the mess of covers on the floor. “I’m sorry… I can’t.”

…

He’d met Carla at one of the nicer clubs in Tacoma. At first, her forward nature had led him to think she had an ork fetish -which didn’t really bother him- but she later confessed to him.

“This place is full of false pretenses and façades…” She smiled at him over her drink. “You’re the only person in here that hasn’t been undressing me with your eyes since you first saw me.”

Slider had tried to keep his distance. He tried to remain objective about their encounter. When Carla asked if he’d stop by the club again the following week, he’d intended to say “no”. Apparently, his mouth had lost the connection to his brain and “yes” came out.

He’d never been on a date. Never had a girlfriend. He was a virgin. All the facts of his reality, superimposed on the background of his UV-life, flooded his mind for the next two weeks. He was too distracted to work, which slotted Jeanie off a little, but he’d saved enough to take a few months off without needing to risk life and limb for more nuyen.

The following week rolled around and, against his conditioned judgment, Slider found his way back to The Alabaster Swan. Carla was there; her fiery red hair was pulled up away from her face to fall in loose curls down her back. Just behind her left ear was a platinum datajack, nearly hidden by rogue curls she had tucked behind her delicate, pointed ears. Her features were refined, almost fragile-looking; like handcrafted porcelain, and her eyes were the deepest blue Slider had ever seen. He almost overlooked the flattering black evening dress she wore, which had a deep vee to her mid-back and a low-cut front that accentuated her bosom, with a slit up the side that reached just below her hip.

Slider had felt grossly under-dressed to have her on his arm and entirely too clumsy when she’d insisted that he dance with her. He was a teenage boy dancing with the prom-queen. Hypno-programming and isolationist behavior could not stop the budding of adolescence, though he was proving quite a late bloomer. Perhaps it was his lack of experience that had drawn Carla to him. Maybe she saw it as a form of innocence… but Slider knew he’d shed more than his share of innocent blood.

Two weeks later, Carla invited him to her apartment.

…

“I can’t.” Slider repeated himself, standing shakily before sinking wearily onto the bed.

“Spirits,” Carla’s voice was a relieved whisper, “I thought you were having a seizure.”

“How long have we been doing this?” Slider’s mind was still clouded with conditioning and fear. He genuinely could not remember how long they had been together.

“I’m not sure what you mean…” Carla’s face twisted in a wry grin, her naked body deliciously detailed as the lights came on in the room. “…Do you mean us talking, or us staring at each other naked?”

“I mean us…” Slider’s tongue seemed to trip over the words, “…us being together.”

Her posture was mildly mocking but undeniably alluring, and Slider realized something was wrong with his perception of reality. How long had he been dreaming?

“Well, ‘we’ haven’t been together…” Carla tried to look playfully thoughtful. It worked. “Yet.”

Carla deftly knelt on the bed and crawled toward Slider, pushing him back against the pillows.

“Of course, I know how to fix that.” She kissed him.

It was like an electric shock to his brain. He’d never kissed a woman before, never felt the glow of physical satiation or the heat of lust… his conditioning had no answers.

“Wait…” Slider managed between Carla’s kisses. “Carla… I have to tell you something.”

For the first time in his life, Slider talked about his past.


	3. Making New Memories

Making New Memories

Slider spent several months involving himself with Carla. He continuously fought down the fear that she might be an agent of… whomever he was hiding from. Jeanie was relieved when he dropped in to Heat 7, if a bit annoyed at the unannounced appearance.

“You haven’t been answering my calls.” Jeanie’s smile was all biz, practiced and without warmth. “I was beginning to think you didn’t like me anymore.”

“Line’s hot.” Slider handed his pocket secretary across the table, his tone nonchalant. “Need something a little more chill. Besides, I enjoyed the vacation.”

“What’s her name?” Slider couldn’t be sure if Jeanie was guessing, intuitive, or having him followed. He listened to his conditioning.

“Like leaving the proverbial key under the doormat.” Slider shook his head, giving Jeanie a wolfish grin. “Jealous? Or worried she might outbid you?”

“So it’s biz, is it?” If Jeanie _was_ having him followed, she was getting dangerously close to letting the truth slip. “Well, whatever you do, don’t forget who your friends are.”

“We’re friends now, are we?” Slider feigned surprise, then followed with a genuine chuckle. “You never cease to amaze, Jeanie.”

“A woman’s gotta have her hidden little talents.” Jeanie leaned toward him. “So, what else are you going to need?”

As quickly as that, Slider was working again. He didn’t pursue jobs with the same ferocity as before. He had a real life to accommodate, and he wasn’t about to let go of his first grip to this reality. Carla proved to be incredibly resourceful, if somewhat enigmatic and dodgy about her dealings. Her day-job as an engineering supervisor for a small software development firm kept her busy for much of the week, while her shadow-work seemed to take a somewhat subdued role in her life.

She knew people in high and low places, in countless cities across the globe… all connected through the virtual reality of the matrix. Carla actually took to delving into Slider’s history as a sort of pet-project, utilizing her contacts to compile data and conjecture from varying sources, think tanks, and conspiracy theorists. A few choice news feeds caught her eye as well, so she added them to the growing pile of information.

Inside a year, she had several mega-pulses of data regarding the “UV-Subjects” and the shadow organization that spawned them.

Slider had never been so angry and afraid at the same time.

“Do you have any idea what these people will do to you when they find me?” He screamed, scattering Carla’s desk in his fury. “And you’ve been writing a fragging story about them, leaving spirits-know-what kind of trail for them to follow!”

No matter how loud he screamed, no matter how angry he got, he couldn’t change what had already happened. And he couldn’t stop her from leaving.

They’d been friends and lovers for almost a year but, try as he might, Slider couldn’t convey his fear in a rational way. He always sounded paranoid. Carla’s findings _should_ have convinced her that his paranoia was justified… the text message she sent to his phone revealed her intentions.

_I know it scares you… but you said yourself that there were others. I was hoping you might find some clues to lead you to your surrogate family._

It was like being hit by an Ares Citymaster. His fear… his conditioning… Slider had sabotaged himself and not even realized it.

Slider returned to Carla’s apartment and waited in her living room. She hadn’t deactivated his key. She hadn’t told the guards at the desk to call the police if he arrived. Slider was going against everything his conditioning told him was the practical course of action.

_They didn’t know everything, either._ Slider smiled darkly to himself.

When Carla got home, she stopped only long enough to acknowledge that Slider was standing by her couch before she visibly ignored him. She ate dinner in silence as Slider waited for her at the couch. He was desperately trying to think of the words to explain everything. She was smarter than him… she probably knew him better than he knew himself… but _she_ wasn’t the one that had been forced into a life of bloodshed and fear. She went to bed, so he waited.

Carla woke in the morning and got ready for work, leaving at her usual time without a word to Slider. He’d waited up all night, sitting on the couch, digging through his thoughts to find some answer… some clue that might help him. When she got home that night, Slider was standing in the living room as he had the day before. He was tired… exhausted… but he could see the strain on Carla’s face nearly matched his own.

“I didn’t choose this life, Carla.” Slider rasped. He hadn’t spoken in two days and his throat was dry.

“Is that supposed to make this okay?” Her face tensed as she fought her emotions, her voice faint but firm.

“No.” He shook his head. This wasn’t anything like what he’d planned. “I… I don’t want it to be like this.”

“Then leave.” There was a hard edge in Carla’s eyes. Slider felt naked… vulnerable.

“I don’t want to lose you.” He shook with fear. Fear of the truth… fear of what _might_ happen… fear of life… fear of losing.

“No.” Carla’s voice was icy and resolute. “You can’t _risk_ losing me. I’m a liability.”

Just like that, she drove a dagger into his being and twisted. It took all he had just to stay standing. His eyes were wide, his jaw slack, arms limp at his sides. The conditioning had been too deeply embedded, too far to save him from the attack. He was peripherally aware that she realized the effect of her words on him, but he couldn’t react. He couldn’t move.

When he’d regained his senses, Slider was still standing by Carla’s couch. The apartment was dark, a clock on the wall displayed the time.

_2 a.m.?_ Slider’s heart raced. _How many days has it been?_

His body ached, his stomach burned with hunger, his mouth was thick with thirst, and a throbbing knot had formed in his chest. Slider began to doubt himself. What if Carla was right? What if his feelings for her had only been perpetuated by his conditioning? Was this some sort of fail-safe to protect the UV-subject from self-exposure? Or was it a true flaw of his real identity?

He felt cold and alone. Slider decided to accept it as the truth.

Carla didn’t move when he entered her room. She didn’t stir when he lay down next to her in the bed. He could hear her breath catch in her throat, could feel her heart beat wildly. He could smell her fear. Slider was ashamed of himself.

“I love you, Carla.” Slider whispered, but his dry throat caused the words to roll forth in a guttural growl. She stiffened at the sound and for a moment Slider didn’t know if she’d heard or understood him.

“I can’t protect you like this.” He added, draping one arm over her and gently squeezing.

He left after she fell asleep. Carla had relaxed after he’d stopped talking, curling back against him in the darkness. With a feather-light kiss on the nape of her neck, he’d slipped from the bed and left her apartment… destroying his key as he hailed a taxi.

She called him two weeks later, but he didn’t answer. He changed apartments the next day. Two more weeks, Jeanie had gotten him another phone and he’d done a couple odd jobs to pay the bills.

After three months, Slider went to The Alabaster Swan. Carla wasn’t there.

He ignored his conditioning and went to her apartment building. The receptionist in the lobby recognized him.

“Ah, Mr. Dersil.” The dwarf man smiled, his face lighting up with familiarity. “Ms. D’Averny left a message for you before she moved.”

“She moved?” Slider didn’t bother concealing his surprise.

“Yes.” The dwarf counted weeks on his fingers. “It’ll be almost two months, now. I must say it was a surprise to me! But, before she left, she gave the office a chip for you should you not have her forwarding information.”

As the clerk rummaged through drawers at his desk, Slider casually glanced around the lobby. Maybe he was just being paranoid. After a few, painstaking moments, the dwarf produced a datachip and offered it to Mr. Dersil.

On it was only a name. Malcolm. Slider knew Malcolm was a troll bouncer at The Alabaster. Perhaps Slider’s paranoia had taken its toll on Carla… then again, maybe someone was playing with him.

The other shoe didn’t drop. At least, it didn’t drop right away. Malcolm gave Slider a contact number for “a friend of Ms. D’Averny”. The friend was a male with a faint German accent, and his attitude was cold and business-like. Even though they never set eyes on each other, Slider felt like the man was dissecting him with his voice. It was a brief exchange, during which Slider was asked several questions to identify himself. A few of the questions he flat-out refused to answer… questions that could get people killed.

After that, Slider was given directions to a local park, though the contact was careful not to use any proper names. Slider picked up on the subtle code and followed suit.

Carla was sitting on a bench, dressed warm against the cool afternoon. The sun peeked out from behind the clouds in a dizzying game of hide-and-seek. The elf woman’s hair was simply coifed, though Slider could see the salon touch, and her eyes appraised him with clinical detachment. Something was very wrong with her demeanor.

“So good of you to drop by.” Her voice was relaxed, but Slider could see tension building in her eyes. “To what do I owe this… unexpected… visit?”

_Is it a game?_

“I was in the neighborhood.” Slider found the lie far easier in the setting than the truth could ever be. “Thought I might say hello.”

“Hello.” The faintest bite of sarcasm warned him to tread carefully. “Was there anything else?”

“Yeah, actually.” He smiled, trying to look bashful. “I think I lost your number a little while back.”

“Well, well.” Her return smile was nothing short of predatory. “Let’s grab a drink, and you can tell me all about it.”

It was a side of Carla he’d never seen… never _wanted_ to see. Once they’d reached a secluded-enough location, the ruse was dropped. She told Slider about the rumors that began to spread in the wake of her searches into Slider’s past, and the breach into her private files that had wiped her findings. Since then, she’d been living like Slider… moving from place to place, changing phone lines, and always looking over her shoulder.

Despite his genuine sympathy for her situation, Slider had his own questions.

“Why the bread crumbs?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” She asked, disbelief on her face.

“Forgive me, I lack certain social graces and niceties, as well as emotional intuition.” Slider tried to laugh it off. “Product of the environment.”

Despite the sting of his words, she nodded in appreciation.

“I deserve that, I suppose.” She touched his hand. “It was important to me… important that you be able to find me.”

Things couldn’t return to the way they had been, however. Too much had happened. Whatever feelings they had for each other, being together was now a potential danger. Communication was risky, at best.

But Carla gave him a LTG number of a friend. The German from earlier. She assured him that the voice on the phone could be trusted and would always arrange a meeting. She’d try to get Slider a clean phone line. Carla was true to her word.

By early 2061, they had fallen into a pattern. Slider would contact Carla and she would pass on information regarding possible leads for him to follow. Most of the information was tenuous… hardly worth acting on… but it helped him to map-out possible UV-subject locations around the globe. He cautioned himself that some, if not all, might actually be active agents for… “them.”

As for the identity of the shadow organization… The UCAS CIA was the most likely candidate. This hypothesis was supported by the fact that the CIA had absolutely no definitive connection to the methods and propaganda used for the project. Too many mega-corps had the funding and materials to launch the project. Too many entities had motive. A vat-raised army of elite assassins and infiltrators was a wet dream in the world of espionage… or a living nightmare. Even the fevered whispers that followed Carla’s discoveries were enough to cause even the boldest to move with trepidation. The idea that someone was planning such a move could never be allowed to reach the public. Every shadowrunner worth their nuyen knew that the issue was taboo; stocks could plummet, corps could fail… the money would run dry. The puppet masters had regained control of the information flow. Slider was impressed that it had taken them so long.

The only other force with the capability and finesse to achieve those far-reaching goals would be a great dragon.

_How the frag could I stop a great dragon?_ Slider would ask himself. _And if not, how do I stop everyone else from gunning for me?_

The answer, presented by his conditioned responses and supported by his real-world experience, was simple.

Be stronger.

It sounded easier than it was, but study brought understanding. He’d been training himself his entire life outside the system… now he knew why. The dossier had told him he was Awakened… that his use of magic would likely follow the path of the physical adept. They’d painted an accurate composite of their weapon long before he left the UV system. But they’d wanted a weapon they could control.

_Soldiers fight out of duty._ Slider composed the philosophy that would forever change his outlook, seamlessly integrating his hypno-programming with his real identity. _Warriors fight because it is who they are._

…

_So, why am I in a trunk?_ Slider blinked up as the lid opened and a familiar face looked down at him. The last three days were a drug-induced blur.


	4. Her Side of Things

Carla D’Averny

The Matrix was a cinch… meeting people was a cinch… Slot it all if life itself didn’t seem gift-wrapped for Carla most of the time. Ever since she was little, she’d been savvy with people and computers.

Born June 12, 2012, and raised as Elizabeth Janice Church, Carla was an elf with human parents. Middle-class living agreed with Carla in her early years, with the exception of sub-par education and the stigma inherent to the mid 2020s. It may have been attributed to her being a product of her environment… but whatever the case, information was easy to assimilate, catalog, and reference for the young digital adept. Her academic achievements were overshadowed only by her hunger to learn more. Extra-curricular functions and programs kept little Carla up on social etiquette and trends in fashion.

During the later years of her schooling, Carla received invitation to attend several prestigious universities and potential internships with various information technologies firms. Taking the time to pick and choose, Carla made sure that federal and private grants funded her continued education.

With an emphasis on software design, Carla majored in applied digital technology, pushing on toward a master’s degree in advanced digital theory and matrix progression. Her doctoral thesis “AI: Procedural Flaws of Emotional Minds” was never published. The Company made sure that Elizabeth Church never received her doctorate.

In the thesis, Carla had outlined fundamental principles of computer programming and logic that would inevitably be “overlooked” in the development of ever more advanced software. Further stating that such oversight would lead to “self-replicating variables” that would produce results similar to computer viruses or potential “AI-grade Smart-Frames,” the thesis concluded that software development would approach a dangerous overlap to brain-wave technology. The consequences of such advancements were varied, but Carla was certain that programming smarter and smarter software would lead to a culture that was directed by computers. “The users become the used.”

The Company approached her with a gloriously high salary offer, complete with amenities and status. With little more than a backward glance, Elizabeth embraced her new life as Wilhemina Caprice.

Hired by the Company in late 2028, Carla was frightened and dismayed when the ’29 crash made her dark predicates a gruesome reality. Her department became focused on system stability and security, though her particular emphasis was on administrative control and personnel safety.

For the next two years, Wilhemina Caprice did battle with digital horrors from her nightmares of the future. She became more aware of the impending “reality” of her thesis and sought old colleagues to discuss the matter. Most couldn’t be found, having been snatched by various corporations and governments to effect changes in digital systems world wide in answer to the crash entity of 2029.

With more advanced software came the need for more advanced hardware. At the urging of the company, Carla agreed to receive the cybernetic implanting of a datajack. Her theories on human-computer interfacing made such a decision a gross violation of her self, but the company paid well… and her department was always well funded.

For several years, Carla (as Wilhemina Caprice) was a dutiful and productive employee, until she got word of her father’s death. He’d been working on a maintenance crew in the Loop in Chicago when the Sears Tower was destroyed in 2039. His body was found beneath an over-turned vehicle near a ruptured gas line. Carla decided that the company was not making her life better. Corporations weren’t making things better. Governments weren’t making things better.

Frag them all to hell and back.

Using her extensive knowledge of computers, Carla began the build-up for her personal exodus.

Leaving the company had been easier than she’d ever thought possible. It wasn’t simple, by any means, but she’d planned… she’d prepared… she’d been ready.

It was mostly thanks to her knack with people, the ability to draw in allies and win favor from strangers that made it possible. Making contact with SIN-less persons and building a broad network took nearly two years. Then there was the ceaseless programming, generating self-replicating dumb frames and data collection programs, along with the handful of smart-frames she’d designed and a single viral code designed to erase her tracks. She’d heard of corporate extractions… she needed the company to believe that this was one such event.

When her annual review came around again, she was gone. The appointment was erased from the administrative log, along with all record of her employment. To the company, she simply ceased to exist. It was no small feat to be sure, but Wilhemina Caprice hadn’t been a real person anyway. Of course, her access to mock-ups and prototypes for the system’s network allowed her to prepare everything in her office while completing her assigned duties.

She assumed the name “Carla D’Averny”. She felt it fitting, as she saw herself being free of the wretched pool that had been her corporate home.

…

Now, though, it all seemed so far away. She’d built and disbanded several small front-businesses under false names and made nuyen hand over fist using her wiz computer skills. She’d tagged along with several runner teams via the Matrix to provide digital backup on more than a dozen jobs. All with the idea that she’d be making a difference… creating some kind of positive change in the world. Idealism wasn’t cheap, though, and the jobs weren’t exactly plentiful.

So, she’d taken to starting her own work; making contacts, forging passports, and trading information. Her thesis found its way into Shadowland, with editorial remarks on current-tech and societal patterns.

Carla didn’t exactly know what to expect the day she found herself sitting with a dragon. Years of training in a hard life and setting lines of code to infiltrate corporate systems hadn’t prepared her for that particular encounter. The wyrm was nice enough, she guessed, though she was more concerned with getting out of the room alive than focusing on matters of etiquette.

Jane-in-the-Box had given her the invitation to the meeting. Carla had worked with Jane several times over the last two years and had learned a lot from her fellow decker… even taught Jane a few tricks with her own point of view. Carla almost viewed Jane as a rival, professionally, but knew that the two of them had very different philosophies on the flesh/metal relationship.

Still, having dinner with Dunkelzahn? That boggled her mind. And his personal assistant did nothing for her self-esteem.

What was the most confusing thing about the whole evening? The dragon wanted her to frequent a Seattle restaurant called “The Alabaster Swan” and continue her side-work as usual. Did anyone say “no” to a dragon? For a job like this, and for the money he was offering… She wasn’t sure she _wanted_ to.

…

The job was _very_ long term; dine at The Alabaster Swan every week and report to Jane-in-the-Box of anything noteworthy.

City officials met with corporate suits… mafiosos and gangers shook hands and shared meals… all very well-dressed and polite in this restaurant/club atmosphere. She catalogued everything mentally, making notes on her pocket secretary about who met with whom and if she overheard anything… even listing what they ordered.

She couldn’t believe her luck, when she got her first wire transfer. One dinner engagement each week had proven expensive, but the payout covered the tab plus a thousand nuyen per month. A message from Jane assured her of continued employ.

_Boss is pleased, keep up the good work… P.S. How was dinner?_

Her side-work was decidedly less enjoyable, though certainly more adrenaline-filled. Data-grabs and a few on-site terminal slices brought in the rest of her bankroll for the next three months while her personal time was filled with fitness, training, and programming.

For three months, she worked for Jane and the wyrm… until Dunkelzahn’s assassination. News spread like wildfire, and Carla was certain that her employer’s death signaled the end of the job.

She reached out with every resource she had, trying to find answers to the questions she knew would come racing her way. The flesh link to the dragon’s death was elusive, but conjecture cast blame to every corner of the earth. Carla even did some high-risk snooping into a few private networks to confer with deckers holed-up in their enclaves of information. There was nothing but rumor, even on Shadowland.

Everything was white-hot… jobs were plentiful and the winds of change had the force of a hurricane.

A message to her private LTG alerted her to her former employer’s situation.

_Why’d you quit the Swan?!_

It was Jane. Once she’d touched-base with Jane-in-the-Box, Carla felt a sharp pang of guilt. She’d been hired for a very long job and had left without completing it. To her credit, Carla noted, she’d not heard back from Jane in the weeks following the dragon’s death.

_Employer? I thought the job was nulled._

_No! Job still on. Possible complication. Might be costly… could lengthen job._

_Usual rate?_

_Reduced._

_??_

_Swan: Weekly. Compensation: 50%_

_Understood._

It made Carla nervous… she didn’t like being nervous. It was good to still have work, and an extra five hundred nuyen each month… but she didn’t know if Dunkelzahn’s decker would have any less clout in the shadow world now that the dragon was dead.

Carla decided it was time for an upgrade. The world was getting a little too fast to rely on old tech.

_J, possible hardware upgrade… medical leave?_

_Don’t stay out too long._

Carla had established several solid identities in North America; so finding a cyber-clinic was more a matter of choice than money. She made sure that they were clean and had top-grade tech. For a few extra nuyen, they relented to her insistence that she be allowed to inspect the implants with her own diagnostic equipment. Wiping the corporate-embedded tags was easy enough, as well as re-formatting the software protocols to fit her specific needs. A replacement datajack, headware memory, sensory input filters and amplification; all high quality and bereft of corporate taint.

The surgery went smoothly and Carla’s recovery was quick: thanks to the combined efforts of technological and magical medicine. She was back to work inside six days, having only a brief adjustment period to the new hardware.

Apart from the now mundane-seeming dinners at The Alabaster Swan, Carla began building several small software-consulting firms to finance her own shadow war against the inhumane corporations and governments.

Her reformist stance allowed her the flexibility to see where the dissolution of a corporation could further a more tolerant agenda. It was the indifference and bigotry of the corporations and the governments that had led to a society so enmeshed in its own narrow-mindedness that collapsed the Sears Tower. The Night of Rage… The Hand of Five… Every intolerant viewpoint that resulted in the deaths of innocents.

It wasn’t anarchy to want the corrupt system replaced with something less corrupt. History had taught Carla that humanity as a whole was always plagued by corruption. The cycle of corruption and rebellion was older than the Sixth World… older than the histories of mankind.

Why should this time be any different? This wasn’t terrorism. It was a methodical revolution.

Her greatest weapon was the Matrix, itself. Nearly every data packet she unearthed was used to sharpen her weapon. Whatever she didn’t harbor for herself, she turned loose through Shadowland and various data-drops to independent media groups.

Let the bastards in their ivory towers tear each other’s throats out.

Before another year had passed, Carla was at her mother’s bedside when the woman lost her battle with cancer. For a few days, she was Elizabeth Church again. Relatives she barely knew paid their respects at the memorial, her cousins attended the cremation. Then, the day she spread her mother’s ashes from a helo flying over the Shattergraves, she was Carla D’Averny.

When Carla got back to her Seattle apartment, a message was waiting on her cyberterminal.

_Possible work. Low profile, short term. Interest?_

Jane-in-the-Box… always busy pushing pieces around for Dunkelzahn, even after the dragon was dead. Carla’s eyebrow rose.

_Send me the info._

_Faster response online…_

_A trail? You ask me to be at your mercy._

_We both know better than that._

The virtual conference with Jane had taken several cycles as Jane outlined a crude plan involving a corporate extraction of sorts.

“Now, I can’t divulge where or from whom, partly because I’m not sure exactly who… but I had a team pull a subject from…”

“I thought you said it was a corporate extract?” Carla’s drab icon shrugged. She didn’t like bridging the computer-flesh gap any more than she needed to do the job.

“Well… mostly, sure.”

“What aren’t you sharing and why won’t it hurt me?” Carla’s tone was final, letting Jane know just how far Carla would accept a blind run.

“Alright… we got wind of some heavy UV facility out there and we did a locate on it… turns out they are _making_ their own runners.”

“We? They?”

“We: you don’t need to know. They: _I_ don’t even know. That bothers me more than just a little. But, that’s not what the job is about. It’s about _you_ not being at the Swan.”

“Wait… _making_ runners? Through a UV system?”

“Wiz tech, right? I know this is right up your alley, that’s why we hired you as a point of contact.”

“No kidding… What timetable were they using?”

“Variable, I suspect, but we got a handful out pre- and post-programming.”

“A handful?”

“Privileged.” Jane held up a hand. “Suffice it to say, there were some complications all around given recent… events.”

“But the wheels were already turning, so you had more than you could handle at one time?”

“Something like that.”

“Meaning you need me for… what?”

“I need you to keep going to the Swan. Part of the extraction team had a little piece of code to embed in case something got totally fragged. You’d know who was a regular and who wasn’t. They might show up at any time, not knowing why they’re there.”

“Wouldn’t that require me to be there everyday?”

“Not really… the embed was day-specific, but non-compelling. It seemed less obtrusive that way.”

“This is starting to sound very long-term.”

“No, that job still stands. Might increase compensation, but I can’t be sure. What I wanted to ask of you is about a little data cross-referencing…”

Jane had been right about the short-term work… it had been _very_ brief. After compiling a few hundred mega-pulses of data and running a comparison program through the files to look for matches to the intelligence Jane-in-the-Box provided, Carla gave Jane a copy of each file and the run was concluded. A neat thousand nuyen wired in exchange. Later, Carla studied the files that had come up with matches, but there was nothing remarkable about the information.

Over the next several months, Jane asked for four more data comparisons. This time, Carla kept a log of the flagged files and began doing her own investigation.

Carla’s latest “legitimate” business was alive and well. Not a corporate giant by any stretch of the word, but functioning and bringing in a modest profit. Providing IT solutions for low-income facilities and families wasn’t a huge priority for the mega-corps. She found a certain amount of personal satisfaction at being able to give people the help they needed for less than they expected. She’d designed specific utilities to upgrade software and repair damaged programs on outdated systems as well as maximizing the capacity of some of the older hardware. It was primarily a small-business and residential service, with no SIN required (Carla had worked with several members of an outreach program to orchestrate real SINs to use instead).

Then, during one of her dinners at The Alabaster Swan, a new face entered the scene. Carla had seen hundreds, if not thousands of faces coming and going at the Swan. This face could have been anyone looking to try something new, but it was while she was having dinner. The way the ork carried himself was different from most of the people who came and went here. He was well-dressed and mannered, nodding politely and thanking the host for showing him to his seat.

His casual demeanor almost hid the intense study he gave the entire establishment. When his eyes passed over Carla, she felt like she’d been picked up, studied, cataloged, and set-aside… all in the span of a heartbeat. His eyes were brilliant, emerald green, cutting through the dim lighting like glittering gems. Each movement was purposeful and final. He was where he wanted to be… but she could see the tension in him… the readiness.

Carla spent nearly half and hour watching him covertly from her table, noting what he ate and what he said to his server. She could feel the pressure building in her own body… Was this one of the subjects that Jane had mentioned? Discreetly, she recorded his image and called Jane-in-the-Box.

_Hello._

_J, this face familiar?_

_Should it be?_

_You didn’t get pictures of them?!_

_So, he’s not a regular, I take it?_

_No… he’s not._

_It might be nothing._

_Alright._

_You’re not going to do anything foolish are you?_

_…_

_Hello?_

Carla disconnected the call and stood from her table. A server approached almost instantly, politely enough that Carla almost forgot she hadn’t paid her bill yet.

“Ah, bring me another drink at that table.” Carla smiled to the server and walked directly over to the smooth-faced ork. He was handsome, for an ork, and his presence was very warm as she approached. His eyes were the only things that revealed the truth.

_He’s making his assessment._

“May I sit?” Carla asked, gesturing to the seat opposite the ork.

The ork raised his hand politely to stop her and stood quickly, fluidly. Moving around the table, he pulled the chair back for her to sit down. She noticed his eyes surveying the room as he moved.

“Please.” His voice was a steady tenor, cool and collected. The practiced ease of his behavior helped her to forget her own nervousness.

“Thank you.” Carla smiled at him briefly as he returned to his chair while she sat down. Perhaps his etiquette was a little rusty, or more modern… he hadn’t stayed to push the seat toward the table for her. Then again, perhaps he was hoping she would leave.

_Not just yet, stranger._

“So, miss…?” The ork looked at her questioningly, letting her fill the silence.

“D’Averny.” Carla saw no hint of recognition in his face at her assumed name.

“Miss D’Averny, to what do I owe this…” he smiled casually and blinked once, “…most delightful privilege?”

His air was aristocratic, refined… outmatching his middle-class clothes and the dinner club’s atmosphere. His eyes never left her eyes until Carla’s drink arrived.

“Well, mister…?” Carla motioned with her hand, doing her best to keep the conversation civil and light while she gauged this ork.

“I am only Slider, I’m afraid.” His apologetic shrug was perfect, his lower lip pouting as he tilted his head and straightened again, smiling. “It is the nature of things.”

“Well, Mister Slider…” Carla picked up her drink. “I should think it my pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“And I; yours, Miss D’Averny.” Slider bowed slightly in his chair. Carla could see the tell-tale signs of physical curiosity flaring his nostrils slightly, could see the flush of his cheeks… Still, his gaze did not waver from her eyes.

“Could I interest you in a drink, Mister Slider?” Carla took a moment to smile at the server who picked up the empty dinner plate from in front of Slider. The faintest hint of a tensing neck muscle on the ork conveyed his unrest at the movement at his side.

“I should enjoy that, miss, thank you. Please, I am not a man of station. You may forego the title. Slider will suffice.”

“So well spoken, I should wonder that you have such an… unusual name.” Carla lifted her glass and took a sip, her eyes looking into the liquid and catching a reflection of Slider’s face in the glass… he was glancing around the room, again. Carla knew she had allure… she’d taunted men before… even made one beg. Maybe this man wasn’t “into” elf women.

“It’s an unfortunate necessity of the times we live in, I think. Sometimes, we choose our names… other times, our names choose us.”

“Truly?” Carla felt a sudden tug in her chest. She remembered choosing her name. Had he chosen his? What would he have done for such a name to choose him? “That is most unfortunate.”

“Quite so… yet, I think you did not answer my question.” Slider’s smile was as broad and warm as ever. Carla was certain it was genuine. “To what do I owe this privilege of your company this evening? Surely not a jest at my expense; a woman of your caliber would not be party to such a ruse.”

“This place is full of false pretenses and façades…” Carla smiled at him over her drink. “You’re the only person in here that hasn’t been undressing me with your eyes since you first saw me.”

“Can you be so sure?” His impish grin did nothing to hide the fact that she was right. She could see it in those emerald eyes.

“Quite sure.”

“Such a keen observer of… human nature, Miss D’Averny.” Slider sat back in his chair and relaxed somewhat, though Carla was acutely aware that he was now in a position to leave suddenly if the situation warranted. “Where does one hone such a skill?”

“Here and there, Slider… though I suppose one might say my calling is computers.” Carla traced a finger up over her ear and down across her datajack. Slider noted the movement and the smile on his face faltered only a moment. “Since you insist I be informal, I must request like kind. You may call me Carla.”

Again, not a hint of recognition crossed the ork’s face. Carla wasn’t sure if that should bother her or not.

“Very well, Miss Carla…”

“Carla.” If Slider was trying to play the aristocrat, she’d certainly put a stop to it.

“My apologies… Carla.” Her name rolled out of his mouth almost like a soft growl. He’d looked away from her just as he’d said it, his face tilted to his left and down. The embarrassed look of a child being caught doing something wrong. She thrilled at the victory, though she wasn’t sure why.

“Tell me, Slider…” Carla leaned forward slightly, seeing Slider’s pulse throb in his neck and his nostrils flaring involuntarily. “Might you happen to return here next week? I might be in the spirit to dance, and I think I might enjoy a dance with you.”

“I assure you… Carla,” Slider’s hesitation revealed the hairline fractures in his cool façade, “I will only disappoint on the dance floor.”

Carla met his gaze without blinking.

“I think you did not answer my question… will you return here next week to dance with me, Slider?”

She could see something like fear in his eyes, could almost see him jumping from the table to flee… but his body was saying something else. His flesh was reacting like flesh was supposed to react. He said yes with his body before his mouth caught up to it… the glimmer of confusion passed over his eyes for an instant and was gone.

“Shall I meet you here at seven, in one week?”

“I should like that very much.” Carla smiled and stood to leave. Slider smiled reflexively, but the disarming warmth had dwindled in exchange for distant thought.

…

_You did what?_

_I asked him to dance with me. What’s the biz? Is he one of the subjects or not?_

_I told you, I don’t know. I never got all the dossiers._

_All?_

_I’ve got a few, but those subjects are null._

_Null?_

_Null. Some programming had lethal repercussions._

_Thanks. I’ll be careful._

Carla did some digging, running searches on anagrams of the name Slider and comparing the name to archival references and historical references with images of the ork she’d spoken to.

Two days of delving turned up nothing. He was a ghost, as far as the computers were concerned. Even Shadowland had nothing on the young ork. A few older references to a runner (or runners) with the name Slider had referred to a middle-aged human and an elf. Carla didn’t think they were in any way related.

She decided to use her flesh network of information. When computers failed to catalogue, meat stored the rest. A majority of the time, people had all the answers… computers just didn’t have hidden agendas. Well, not _most_ computers.

_Slider_ wasn’t a common street name. Not rare, but not common either. After running down a few leads, Carla uncovered a local gang (perhaps operating as cover for a runner team) called “Crunchy’s Heroes.” An ork going by the name of Slider had been working with the group for some time before setting out on his own. His past beyond that had slipped through the cracks, like anyone without a SIN… and by the time Carla had _that_ information, she had to get ready for her dance-date with Slider.

…

It had been a bad idea to start with, returning to the Alabaster. Carla was certain that Slider was one of Jane’s missing UV subjects, but the risk was great enough that even suspecting him should have warned her away from any attempt to get closer.

Still, as she danced with him, she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he was only what he seemed. His steps weren’t perfect, but he knew them, and his impeccable manner was riddled with the flush of youth. In another place, he would seem a middle-class escort or bodyguard whose rudimentary skills stumbled slightly on his more primal impulses. Before the end of the night, she was convinced that Slider was attracted to her.

“Where did you learn to dance like that?”

“My father…” Slider stopped himself, shaking his head. “It was a long time ago. Sorry, I’m a bit out of practice.”

“No need for apology, you’re much better than you think.”

She cataloged his response for later review. The remark about his father had been unbidden and laden with familiarity… a visceral emotion that Slider immediately fought to contain. Carla didn’t think any amount of programming could produce that kind of genuine reaction. She didn’t let her guard down, however. This handsome ork was still in her territory, and the mystery of his arrival still pulled at her. She needed to know more.

_Keep your friends close… your enemies closer._

Until she could determine which category to put Slider in, she would try to keep him close enough.

…

For nearly two weeks, she engaged Slider in a number of social activities. An orchestra, the cinema, opera, and dinner on two more occasions. All the while, her contacts and informants were digging into what she’d found. A mage associate of Carla’s had also assensed the ork during one of their encounters. Carla was not pleased with the reports.

“He’s got a lot of hidden potential. An adept, for certain… but there’s more, I’m sure of it. I just don’t know what it is.”

“From what we’ve found about Crunchy’s… Slider linked up with them after a big run. They were heavy into something that paid well… haven’t taken another high-risk job like that since the kid started with them. Lost a few members while he was there, too. Shaman name of Royo Graysky, and a cyber-sensitive lass named Kalinda. No word on what their relationship might have been, but Slider left a few months after the run where those two died.”

“Maybe he felt responsible?”

“Maybe he _was_ responsible… and he cut loose before they found out?”

“No, he went to town on the jokers that geeked his team-mates. Very brutal. No, he cared about them, but I didn’t find out how _much_ he cared about them. Enough, I suppose.”

“Why’s this guy so important?”

“I want to know everything there is to know… that’s all you ever needed from me before.”

“Right, right… just remember, omae, I’ve got an interest in seeing you breathing. Don’t get in over your head.”

“Tell me more…”

…

The dumbest thing she could’ve done… and she did it. So, Slider was in her apartment… and she was seducing him. Reading his body was like looking at a line of code. It would’ve been hidden, if you didn’t already know the language. What made matters worse was the nagging feeling that Carla _wanted_ to seduce him.

She knew that Slider had a bloody past, as far as the last few years went. So did she. Oh, she kept her hands clean enough, but Slider was something else completely. He had killed for money… revenge… even necessity… but he was still _missing_ something in the way he carried himself. The raw, barely-confined energy that seemed to swell in him when Carla met his gaze. It was the blind, inexperienced desire of youth. She had known that stare many times… but never from someone that had tasted so much of the hardships of the sprawl… never from someone so _dangerous_.

Perhaps that was why she desired him. On some pre-conscious level, she sensed his unspoiled sexuality… the purity of an unexplored facet of his existence… greed consumed her for it.

Like a predator, she moved to devour that last piece of innocence in Slider. Not caring if it might turn him into a monster… not caring if it might make him useless to her in the future… or if it made him a slave to physical desire. She slipped out of her clothes while he stared at her.

When she pushed Slider back onto her bed, she could feel a squirming warning in her gut… but her own lust had long thrown caution to the wind.

To her surprise, Slider’s face had become a mask of fear. His eyes were glazed, thoughts elsewhere, and his body was rigid in all the wrong places.

“What are you thinking about?” Carla asked, brushing her hair back over a long, pointed ear. She needed something to snap him back into the moment.

“I’m terrified of letting anyone close.” She thought for a moment that she might have succeeded, but Slider’s body remained frozen in fear.

“Am I too close?” She’d meant for it to be playful… She’d wanted it to help him relax. Reaching through his shirt to tickle his stomach was supposed to come across as a joke.

“Yes.” She could _hear_ his voice shaking. His fear actually frightened her.

There was something else about the way his body trembled. She couldn’t tell if it was anticipation or fright, anymore. For an instant, Slider stopped breathing.

“Slider?” But she knew he couldn’t hear her. She got up from the bed, disappointed and with a growing sexual frustration. Maybe she’d gone too fast… not enough foreplay… They hadn’t even kissed yet. Of course, two people rutting out their physical lust didn’t need that, but maybe that was part of the problem.

Then, Slider gasped.

The seizure that followed could only be described as a nightmare. Carla knew that some instances of epilepsy could result in grossly swollen muscles and impossible bends in joints, potentially leading to broken bones or dislocations… but what she _saw_ was horrific.

The spasms that wracked through Slider caused his limbs to bulge impossibly, tearing his clothing to ribbons as he gagged and gurgled in pain. In his thrashing, though Carla would never admit that her fear had clouded her perception, she could swear his skin had turned to scales in some places. With a scream that paralyzed her, Slider flailed out of the bed and went limp, tangled in the bed sheets and panting.

Carla had been reaching for the telecom, thinking she might need a mage, or a doctor… or a priest. Slider’s seizure had lasted only seconds… but for Carla, each heartbeat had felt like hours. She was relieved when he spoke. Relieved that he was alive and aware. Relieved and in need of comfort… but from Slider? At that moment, she was too relieved to be scared.

“I’m sorry, Carla…” Slider picked himself up, still dazed and looking exhausted. “I’m sorry… I can’t.”

Carla realized that she was holding her breath and her heart was racing. What was happening?

“I can’t.” Slider said again, shaking as he sank back down on the bed.

“Spirits.” Carla began breathing again, trying desperately to calm herself. “I thought you were having a seizure.”

A long, painful moment passed before Slider responded with a question. Carla became aware of their nakedness almost as an afterthought.

_Midnight in Eden… have we eaten of the fruit?_ The thought amused her.

“How long have we been doing this?” Carla could see the confusion on Slider’s face. His question was almost a shock to her. Neuro-physiology wasn’t her field, but if short-term memory loss was a side-effect of the seizure, it would make for a long night.

“I’m not sure what you mean…” Carla played it light, even though her heart was still racing. They both needed to calm down. She turned the lights on. “…Do you mean us talking, or us staring at each other naked?”

Slider looked at her, as though he just now noticed her in the room. His body responded the way it was supposed to… the way the male body is designed to respond. His awareness sparked her interest again, his obvious arousal complimenting her without words.

“I mean us…” Slider’s stumbling words were endearing to her, making her at ease, even if it was a little strange. “…us being together.”

Had his episode really fragged his mind that badly? Carla decided it needed a woman’s touch… He just needed to be fragged into the _right_ frame of mind. The more she looked at him, the more she wanted to apply her theory.

“Well, ‘we’ haven’t been together…” Carla posed, pensive. She could see the immediate reaction and was pleased with it. “Yet.”

Stepping toward the bed, Carla knelt down and crawled across the mattress to her soon-to-be lover. The prickling caution in her mind gave only cursory warning before being snuffed by Slider’s scent. Pushing Slider back against the pillows, Carla stared into his eyes… lust reflecting lust.

“Of course, I know how to fix that.”

When she kissed him, he froze again.

_Dammit. Not again. Please not again._

But his body relaxed after the initial shock, and Slider began to respond. His inexperienced hunger had all the subtlety of dynamite and it was filled with the same zeal. Carla could feel Slider trying to devour her with his mouth in that first kiss. Each movement studied, gathered, adapted to make the next movement more gratifying and confident. She wanted more of that hunger.

Moving her lips away from his, Carla began kissing Slider’s face and neck, their bodies instinctively grinding against each other… but Slider stopped her.

“Wait…” and she shut his mouth with a fevered kiss. She was tired of waiting. “Carla… I have to tell you something.”

Like cold water, Slider started talking.

“My name is Raes…”

…

That was only one of the more terrifying nights she experienced with Slider in her life. Learning that your chosen bedmate for the night is a corp-(or government-)bred and trained assassin and could well kill you without hesitation for no apparent reason is a sobering event. She wanted to call Jane-in-the-Box. She wanted every ally she knew to come and take this… thing… away from her. But Carla recognized the trust that Slider had shown in revealing the truth to her, and the dangerous vulnerability he allowed himself that night in her bed.

She knew he couldn’t allow that trust to be betrayed, either. Whether he realized it or not, Carla could foresee a conditioned protocol for a breach in trust. He had brutally killed those responsible for harming his teammates. What would save her if she harmed _him_?

…

For days, Carla struggled with the avenues before her. Keeping to her “normal” routine and setting up information relays with some of her more trustworthy associates so that any violence from Slider might be mitigated… or at least returned in kind.

In addition, she tried to give Slider a feeling of ease and safety, even going so far as to give him a key to one of her apartments. The last thing she needed was his suspicion.

Jane-in-the-Box’s call was anticipated, but Carla was more than a little ruffled that it had taken so long for the decker to contact her.

_Hey there… what news?_

_You tell me. He’s contained for the moment._

_Contained? Sounds a little risky, even for you._

_You have a better idea? What’s the monster designed for?_

_Horrible things… we should talk more._

So Carla jacked in and met with Jane. While trading information, Jane received two transmissions (possibly phone calls) but did not indicate that there would be an interruption. Carla was given a full report on all Jane’s data regarding Slider’s file; hypno-programming, UV simulation parameters, and projected applications of the agent.

“You don’t know anything about what he’s been doing for the past two years?”

“I’ve been busy, but I’ve got people looking into it… besides, **you** found him.” Jane’s tone hinted there was some admonishment underneath all the civility. “He was the only agent that was located through the extraction embed. All the other agents that were liberated were neutralized, persuaded to cooperate, or continue to elude us.”

“So why did he accept the embedded impulse?”

“Why indeed…” Jane posed thoughtfully for a moment. “I suspect it’s because his simulation was the only one interrupted. He may not yet be able to completely distinguish the difference between the programmed impulses and an original feeling.”

“At this stage, how could we be so sure the two are any different?”

“Exactly.” Jane nodded. “Except… the simulation was intended to produce an agent where ‘conditioning’ _is_ the natural state.”

“And you think the interruption has allowed Slider to make the distinction?”

“Yes, it’s very probable.”

“Ok… what’s this pulse about an ‘anomaly’ in the subject?”

“It’s magical in nature, outside his leaning toward being an adept. All I managed to gather were some references to personal files on a sealed system and the name of the researcher that discovered the anomaly.”

“A mage, then?”

“I can only assume so. Whoever it was, though, kept the information strictly off-network. They didn’t want the secondary research being tampered with… but both projects used the same monitoring array, so…”

“So you sleazed some readings that were tied to the secondary.”

“Yup. Whatever the anomaly is, it’s fully developed but lying dormant.”

“Possibly connected to an ‘insufficient mana flow’?”

“That’s what I think.”

“Meaning…?”

“I don’t know, C. That’s what bothers me.”

“And you want me to bring him to you so you can evaluate him and give him a safe harbor?”

“I thought I’d have trouble convincing you, but looks like…”

“No.”

“What?”

“I have no guarantees that you aren’t somehow responsible for his involvement in the UV program… that you aren’t tied to the people that created these agents.”

“Now wait just a…”

{Connection Terminated}

…

Carla didn’t like any of it. There were too many rough edges, blind corners, and missing links. Maybe it was Slider’s own personal paranoia rubbing off on her, but now she saw every avenue leading to the group that had created the Raes persona in Slider’s mind. She wanted to trust Jane… she needed to trust someone…

So, she put her trust in Slider.

She spent months with him, establishing a firm reality for him to call his own… a life that was outside the shadows, outside the programming. It was a nearly maternal experience for Carla… except that she wanted him.

His zeal more than compensated for his lack of experience… and Carla couldn’t help but wonder if his rapid adaptation was conditioned or newly awakened.

When Slider decided to go back to working the shadows, Carla had offered him a position with some of her associates. His broad skills would make him valuable nearly anywhere he went, but she wanted to be able to keep an eye on him. If there was some nasty little surprise waiting to burst forth at the worst time, Carla wanted to be able to mitigate its effects. Slider refused with such aplomb that Carla found his refusal more compliment than affront.

That was about the time she started digging for more information. Using the comparison files that Jane had asked for and more specific information she had about Slider, Carla began looking for other agents. The trouble would be; how could she find someone that was conditioned to be “normal”?

Data collection was the least of the work, as the majority of the vital intelligence would only be found in people who had encountered the agents that were still missing.

Carla stopped meeting Jane-in-the-Box online and answered most of her inquiries tersely.

“I’m keeping an eye on him.”

Until she’d made a breakthrough…

In all the files and meetings and recordings, she found a promising lead. A human street samurai named “Clinch.” Once she’d compiled enough information, Carla called Jane and asked her to review the packet. Now, she was more confident that Jane was genuinely trying to help Slider and the other agents.

Minutes later, Jane answered with a dossier: Seth Castille, an agent that had been at-large since shortly after his liberation. Carla had been careful not to divulge where Clinch might be, instead using only places the man had been.

Jane was still animated during the exchange. Apparently, her own efforts had been too diluted to narrow the web of coincidence into a map of probability, and she was eager to act on Carla’s information.

“I want Slider to check him over, first.”

“Don’t take too long, I’m going to try to contact him as soon as I can locate him.”

…

Carla had never seen Slider so angry than when she’d shown him the files she’d been working on. Even though there were clues as to which corporations or governments would actually pursue the project, and evidence that at least three other agents were still roaming the globe hiding from enemies they didn’t know, Slider was furious.

Because she had placed herself at great risk?

It didn’t make sense. She was giving him direction… she was giving him tools to strike back at the beasts that had stripped his childhood and made a mockery of his life.

The way Slider acted was as though he _knew_ he would be captured someday, that his fate was to be hunted or destroyed. He seemed to accept it. But he couldn’t accept her choice to risk helping him? Why was it suddenly ‘ok’ for Slider to be hunted, but Carla couldn’t help him escape that doom?

Slider had stormed out of her apartment, leaving Carla alone with the files and a growing chill in her stomach. He didn’t understand because he was too afraid. He knew only enough to fear what he didn’t know, and that fear kept him from searching for answers.

Unless he was already a slave to his conditioning, and he was stringing her along the entire time.

The shock of that possibility was enough to hurt. _If_ Slider had been deceiving her this entire time… then Carla had little hope of escaping the intrigue with her life. She started planning as soon as she got to her office.

Within three hours, a plan had been formed and a team assembled. Thanks to her own foresight, Carla was tracking Slider’s pocket secretary and having her former lover followed by a mage associate before she even left the office. By the time Slider had returned to her apartment, surveillance gear had already been planted and operatives waited for the first indication of trouble. It was expensive, to say the least… but Carla valued her life more than Slider’s, at that point.

Carla mustered every ounce of control over herself that she could and ignored Slider. Though it might provoke him, she didn’t like the idea of giving him fuel for whatever scheme he might try to carry out. So, she waited and listened to the chatter over her transceiver. Slider barely moved in her living room.

The mage had begun astrally projecting and watching the ork, but his reports were inconclusive.

“He’s confused, uncertain.” (mage)

“Could mean anything.” (monitor 1)

“Could mean nothing.” (Carla)

“And it could mean everything.” (mage)

A full day passed and Slider remained in her living room. Carla almost didn’t return that night, having seriously considered using one of her other apartments to get away from the problem. But that would only trade problems as Slider would then be cut loose and unwatched. Her monitor had told her several times that her plan, if even it could be called a plan, was complete madness.

But when she came back to her apartment on the second night, Slider spoke.

“I didn’t choose this life, Carla.” His voice was gravel and sand… the monitors had confirmed that Slider had not slept, ate, or drank in over thirty hours.

_He’s the enemy, Carla._ She reminded herself. _It’s all a lie._

“Is that supposed to make this okay?” She wanted to sound in control, but she was terrified of what was happening. She could see him shaking, but it didn’t carry the malicious intent of a murderer waiting to strike.

“No.” He shook his head. It was too perfectly timed to be genuine. “I… I don’t want it to be like this.”

_Or it_ is _genuine… is it?_

“Then leave.” She summoned every moment of fear and doubt and smothered each syllable with venom.

“I don’t want to lose you.” His voice cracked perfectly… his body trembling. Oh, how cunning he was to deceive her for so long.

“No.” Carla’s voice shattered his façade and laid the truth bare to her eyes. “You can’t _risk_ losing me. I’m a liability.”

It was not the fear of being discovered that she witnessed in his face, or the anger of one that has been called a liar, or even the shame of someone exposed for the charlatan they are. She saw heartbreak. Carla was immediately aware that she might never hurt another person so deeply in her lifetime, even if she wanted to. Her triumph turned to horror as she realized her mistake.

_He was afraid for me._

He’d stopped moving… possibly stopped breathing. Carla couldn’t bear to look at him anymore and she went to her bedroom. In the stillness that followed, Carla stifled sobs in a pillow. The transceiver was mercifully silent. Somewhere in the darkness, Carla drifted into a dreamless sleep.

“Carla, wake up! He’s moving toward your room.” The hiss in her ear was that of a human street samurai name ‘Jabber’. The monitor’s urgent whisper brought Carla to painful awareness.

She could feel the emotional ache of what she’d done, fought to compose herself so that she could feign sleep enough to protect herself if necessary. Carla was aware that she faced away from the door.

“Say the word and I’ll have Xaviar take him down.” Jabber’s patience was wearing thin.

Carla slowly realized, as she heard Slider enter the room that she didn’t want to be saved. If he was there to kill her, it would be a kindness… suitable revenge for what she’d done.

“Carla, don’t be stupid…”

She ignored Jabber, waiting silently as Slider got into the bed with her.

Time slowed as her heart began racing, her thoughts blurring as they sped through her mind. She could see the perfect honesty in Slider’s face, the first bold act of trust he’d made in his entire life on the night he’d told her about his past. He had given her everything he had refused to the rest of the world, and she had called it a lie and thrown it back in his face.

Her breathing was ragged, but she tied to remain still. She could feel the heat of Slider’s body against her back. His breath was like fire against her neck as he spoke.

“I love you, Carla.” His growl was full of pain, and Carla felt as though she’d been struck.

_I knew…_ she thought, fighting back tears. _All this time, I knew._

There was a heavy silence as they lay there. Slider’s breath felt less intense, now, and Carla felt the urge to say something… but no words came forth. She lay there, warmed by the steady rhythm of Slider’s breathing and the thundering of her own heartbeats.

Slider’s arm reached over her and pulled her close to him.

“I can’t protect you like this.”

_But you would’ve tried._ Carla smiled, awash in the heat around her. _Spirits, you would’ve tried._

She felt safe. She knew he would leave. Because of what she’d done, he would leave. There was no avoiding it, anymore. They would both pay the price of her folly. So, she did the only thing she could do… she savored every breath in the moment before she fell asleep again.

…

Carla woke to an alarm clock, the feeling of an empty bed and fading warmth in the room.

Her data terminal blinked for her attention, messages waiting to be reviewed. The observation team had followed Slider after he left and was awaiting further instructions. A security alert from her office building notified her of a break-in late in the night. Several news articles that had been tagged by a smart-frame for her perusal. Jane-in-the-Box was wondering what Slider thought about Carla’s “prospective sibling” idea. And an assortment of automated advertising.

Carla told the team to discontinue the operation and made arrangements to complete their payment. She doubted very much that Slider would place her in any danger willingly. She downloaded the flagged news articles and replied to Jane with: “House of cards.” Deleting the junk ads, Carla then opened the security alert file and read through the report.

Twenty minutes later, she was not in her apartment.

The break-in had been professional, with a very specific target. Information. Giga-pulses of data had been stolen, hardware demolished, and hard-copies taken. The legitimate aspects of her business were reasonably insured against such events, but the trace amounts of data regarding her search into Slider’s past were the real target. When she’d learned of the disappearance of those particular files, she knew that someone had found her trail.

Seconds ticked away all the while someone or some _thing_ was getting closer and closer to discovering Carla and, through her, Slider.

Calling on favors owed and debts due, Carla vanished.

…

For two weeks, Carla dodged the same shadows that had plagued Slider, though she felt they were much closer to her than to him. Leaving only the faintest trail of breadcrumbs for her estranged lover, she spent much of her time dropping data packets into major information hubs to hide her trail. The added benefit of giving her pursuers more shadows to chase on their own was little consolation, but consolation all the same.

As soon as she felt she had breathing room, she tried contacting Slider through a series of scrambled relays. He never answered. She didn’t bother leaving a message.

_Maybe it’s better for both of us._

Putting in a call to Jane, Carla made arrangements to start a new life and career.

“Welcome to the Draco-Foundation.”

…

“Nothing.”

“Keep looking.” Carla ordered over her tacticom. “I know he’s out there.”

_I can feel it._ She couldn’t explain why she knew he’d come looking today.

“Very well.” Symon was always very calm, very focused on his task. Jane had paired her with the mage to locate Castille, now she was trying to reconnect with Slider.

Hours later, Carla was about to call off the surveillance of her old apartment when she noticed a non-descript ork in street clothes enter the building. He’d been walking briskly with his head tilted down under his hat just enough that she hadn’t quite seen his face.

“Contact in the lobby.” Symon sent a motion-capture image from his remote micro-cam to Carla.

“That’s him.” Carla was relieved to see that Slider was alive, though she felt a sudden surge of anxiety at how he might react if Symon approached him. “Do not approach.”

“Acknowledged.”

Carla waited and watched the entrace.

“He’s speaking with the clerk.”

…

“Did you leave something for him?”

“A name.”

“Let me know if we need to deviate from your plan.”

“Acknowledged.”

“And, omae…?”

“Yes?”

“Next time, I would appreciate being made aware of a pre-existing condition during an op.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know if… I wasn’t sure it would matter.”

Carla queued her voice modification program (“Franz”) and instructed Symon to follow Slider from a safe distance.

“He’ll probably be headed for the Alabaster Swan, if you want to get a head-start.”

“I’m on it.”

…

When Slider called, Carla used Symon’s input to guide the former UV subject to the park to where she’d relocated. Having Symon discontinue pursuit once she’d made visual contact, Carla did her best to keep Slider from letting anything slip. She still wasn’t certain she could trust him again, or that he would trust her.

Using specific phrasing from a data-file sleazing from the UV research lab years ago, Carla made Slider very aware of the precarious nature of their situation. Slider never seemed to notice his conditioned reaction to the pre-programmed conversation.

Once she could get him somewhere to explain the situation, things went smoothly. She could sense the emotional closeness that she’d feared lost, but the time and events between had created a distance she didn’t think they’d ever bridge. Maybe Slider felt truly alone in the world… and Carla couldn’t help but feel responsible for that.

Maybe that was why she wanted to help him, now. She felt responsible for him, responsible for his solitude.

…

So, she worked for the Draco-Foundation and moonlighted as an informant for Slider. She never told him whom she was working with, now, and he never asked. Jane kept close tabs on Carla’s conversations with Slider, but Carla had approved the surveillance to maintain her objectivity regarding the organization that was still stalking Slider and the other possible agents. She even “hired” Slider to act as bodyguard for her on a few data-collection runs. She paid well for his services.

When Jane had the time, Carla would compare notes on intelligence files and news feeds from around the globe. The archives started piling up with logged information. Seth Castille was eventually brought onboard with DF, but before Carla could effect a meeting between him and Slider, the ork dropped off the map.

Worried that Slider might have finally been captured, or worse: activated as an agent, Carla sent a team to scour his apartment.

His apartment had been ransacked and Slider was missing. On-site investigation led the operatives to a local gang that had _very_ recently lost several members in a street-fight with an ork that matched Slider’s description. By the time the gang’s hideout was raided, Slider was nowhere to be found. He’d apparently been handed over to another party for sale to the highest bidder. Proof of Slider’s latest “condition” was found in the hideout.

…

“Jane, have a look at this.”

“Who… what am I looking at here?”

“Slider… about sixteen hours ago.”

“Did you…?”

“Don’t you think I would’ve mentioned it once I started working for you?” Carla did nothing to hide her agitation. “He called me to cancel the meeting and said he’d come down with something. I’ve never known him to cancel a meeting for any reason… it didn’t make sense until…”

“Can I have a copy of this?”

“Sure.” Carla let the image drift toward Jane’s hand.

“I think we can safely say we now know what the ‘anomaly’ is.”

“Are you sure it isn’t a SURGE?”

“No… this…” Jane trailed off, having already copied and transmitted the file to another terminal.

“What aren’t you telling me, boss?” Carla’s voice was resolute, she pulled the original image toward her and made an archive record of it.

“I know what happened to him… well… I know what he is, anyway.”

“How? No, never mind, I don’t care.” Carla shook her head looking at the picture of a monster that gangers had sworn was Slider. “We need to find him… _I_ need to find him.”

“We’re with you.”

“Given his… ‘condition’… I’m not surprised.”

…

When Slider called almost four days later, Carla was amazed, relieved, and mildly annoyed. DF’s efforts to locate Slider had found _nothing_. What slotted her off the most was that he seemed in better health than ever and was asking for more favors. As though nothing strange had happened at all.

_He always did know how to disappear._ She reminded herself, keeping her calm and tracing the call. _I guess an involuntary disappearance would be more complete than a voluntary one._

Running numbers back and forth through relays and dead ends, Carla managed to locate the portable phone Slider was using. Jane had gotten her some very nice decking gear to augment her already impressive skills. She didn’t want to risk drawing attention to him by sending a team to verify his condition, so she made sure to log the address for later use.

By the end of the week, she’d put an observer in the area where Slider was staying to watch out for unusual activity. She even had a few video feeds of Slider “acclimating” to his new form. Carla found his transformations fascinating and horrifying… the memory of her first night with him in her apartment flickered through her mind.

“Why the interest?”

“What?”

“Why are you so interested in him?” Symon asked, massaging his hands idly. “Because you were lovers, yes?”

“Because I owe it to him.” Carla ignored the raised eyebrow that presented Symon’s request for her to elaborate.

“Shut up, Symon.”

“Shutting up, Carla.”

…

Then, Slider left for Denver. Jane had made it clear that DF was _very_ interested in Slider, now more than ever. Carla wasn’t particularly pleased with the increased emphasis on Slider’s “recruitment,” but she couldn’t deny that she wanted him to be closer to her. Even if he was some kind of shifter.

When Jane pulled Carla off Slider’s trail, Carla demanded an explanation.

“Orders are orders…” Jane-in-the-Box shrugged apologetically before adding, “but the boss wants Slider to deal with us directly… so Slider doesn’t blame you and doesn’t think of you as attached to the Foundation.”

It was an intelligent move, one that accounted for the emotions of the operatives that might be involved and eliminated the threat before it started. Carla could only acquiesce.

When she heard about the reactor explosion in Denver, she knew Slider was involved. The pain in her chest was all the proof she needed.

_Because I love him._ Carla wept. In the two years she had known him, she’d never said it… he’d never asked.


End file.
